Shooting Occurs Near California Polling Station —  Police have rushed to the scene in Azusa on the night of the election. The person who opened fire earlier this afternoon is dead. Police identified him as a Hispanic male. Police found the suspect dead when they entered the home he had barricaded himself in. It is unclear if he killed himself or whether he died from police fire. The suspect had an assault-style rifle. Police are now searching the area to make sure there are no other suspects and there are no victims. Officials also confirmed the shooting was not related to the election. Previous reports the suspect was a woman were false, police say. Shooting Victim Identified The one fatality from the shooting Tuesday afternoon was a man in his 70s, police say. He was killed after an assailant with an assault-style weapon opened fire. The shooter is still surrounded by police, barricaded in a nearby home.

It's amazing that people still debate the issue of gun rights. If someone had a gun at that station, they would have taken out the crazy lunatic who opened fire. Instead, there was one tragic fatality, a 70-year old man, an innocent life taken out so suddenly and he did not deserve this end, I'm sure. People need to stop this political correctness and resort back to logic: we need to protect ourselves and our families, no ifs or buts! There is no time to rely on the police or the government to bail us out-our sefty is in our own hands people!


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 40 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 140000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.5 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 4.0 in extraversion, 4.0 in agreeableness, and 5.5 in stability.

Food, water fears remain year after Brazil mine dam disaster —  COLATINA, Brazil — One year after a dam ruptured and sent a giant wave of metal-laden mud gushing into one of Brazil’s most important rivers, people who live along the banks won’t drink the water and fishermen are afraid to eat their catch. Upward of 10 billion gallons of mud filled with mining waste buried towns in the Nov. 5 dam break that has been described as the worst environmental disaster in Latin America’s largest country. Nineteen people perished. Across 5,000 acres — about six times the size of New York City’s Central Park — the onslaught of mud crushed thousands of trees and wildlife. In the river, more than 14 tons of fish died, mostly after mud got stuck in their gills. An equally large amount of aquatic plants died when turbid waters blocked out the sunlight needed to survive. The environmental damage was so vast that even a year later, many people in the area won’t drink or cook with water from their faucets because, unlike the groundwater, it’s connected to a network of reservoirs the Doce River feeds into. On a recent day, construction worker Samuel Alves de Andrade was among several people lining up outside a hut for well water sourced by an aquifer in the city of Colatina, about 407 miles (655 kilometers) northeast of Rio de Janeiro. “This water is a lot better than what comes from the river. We have to do what’s best for us,” he said as he filled plastic jugs for family members. Fishermen say they’re staying away from the river because they keep finding fish with red spots and wart-like bumps, prompting environmental authorities to launch their own studies. A judge has ordered Samarco— a venture between giants Vale of Brazil and BHP Billiton of Australia— to pay for independent studies, but it’s unclear when results will be released. “I have been fishing in the Doce River waters for more than 30 years, but now I don’t have the guts to eat that fish,” said Jose de Fatima Lemes, president of the Colatina fishermen’s association. Residents and environmental experts say subsequent cleanup efforts by mega mining company Samarco have been slow and ineffective. Doubts also persist about the local government’s assurances that Doce River’s water is safe to consume. “The mud is still all over the banks,” said Andre Dos Santos, a biologist at the Federal University of Sao Carlos who has collected samples along the Doce River since the disaster. “The river will never be the same.” Rich in history and commerce, the Doce River had long been a reliable source of water and food for millions of residents and thousands of companies along its banks. Samarco’s chief officer for sustainable projects, Maury de Souza Jr., said the company is advancing in its cleanup and has not found any water quality problems. Ubaldina Isaac, of Brazil’s environmental ministry, said a key government priority now is to reforest the banks to prevent rainwater from dragging back into the river the mine waste that remains wedged in the dirt. One recent morning, Isaac gestured to some recently planted bushes that had already died or rooted out even before the rainy season had fully kicked off in November. She said the plants should have lasted through the wet season that stretches into the first months of the year. Without sufficient vegetation “we have no system to hold the waste, and so it continues flowing into the river,” she said. Rio Doce was initially feared by Portuguese gold explorers because of the difficulties they encountered navigating its zig-zagging path. But in the 19th century, communities formed along the river’s path through the thick Atlantic rainforest as mining activity and cattle ranching gradually increased. Today, many businesses operate along the Doce, including fishing, steelmaking and companies that produce paper and charcoal. Hundreds of fishermen who lost their livelihood in the disaster receive a monthly compensation of about $400 from Samarco, plus $80 more for each of their dependents. Some say they used to sell their fish for as much as $1,200 a month. On a recent afternoon, fisherman Diomar Lordes visited the river with his son and they sat on the broken wooden boat that carried him through the waters for decades. “I have no hope I will fish here again,” Lordes said. “It’s like we lost a relative. A life ended.” Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

I really feel for the people who depend on that river for their livilihood. it seems like real lasting and permanent damage has been caused, and people don't really know what to do about it or do next. The confusion that remains is awful. It sounds like a lot of people's fishing careers will never before restored with the river the way it is now.


http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/13/europe/paris-attacks-one-year-on/index.html —  Lanterns, candles and calls for peace illuminated the City of Light on Sunday as Paris mourned 130 people killed one year ago in attacks throughout the city.   November 13, 2015, was like any other day for Georges Salines: Work, a lunchtime swim with his daughter Lola, watching the news on TV, and an early night. He had no idea, until the phone rang, jolting him from his sleep, that his world was about to change forever. "I went to bed ... without knowing what was going on in the streets of Paris," he recalls. "I was woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night, from my eldest son, who knew that his sister was at the Bataclan." Salines' 29-year-old daughter, Lola, had gone to a concert at the Bataclan by US rock band the Eagles of Death Metal. Midway through the show, ISIS-linked gunmen opened fire on the audience and detonated suicide vests; 90 people were killed in the raid, one of a series of coordinated attacks across Paris. Unable to reach her, the family spent hours trying to find out what had happened to Lola, calling emergency help lines and hospitals, even the morgue, but nobody could tell them if she was alive. Then the worst news, delivered in the worst way: They discovered via social media that she had been killed. "I hope she didn't suffer or see her death coming," her father says. French President Francois Hollande unveiled plaques at attack sites in the city -- at the Stade de France, outside the Petit Cambodge restaurant, in the Boulevard Voltaire, and at the Bonne Biere and Belle Equipe cafes. At the Bataclan, the President tore down a French flag to reveal the memorial, as the names of all 90 who perished there were read aloud in solemn ceremony. It followed an emotional performance on Saturday night by musician Sting, a fundraiser for victim support charities at the newly opened Bataclan. He began with the words: "We shall not forget them." The much-loved venue has been renovated to remove all traces of the massacre that took place there. On Sunday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said a state of emergency, first imposed in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, will likely be extended. With the country's presidential elections coming in April-May, the prime minister said the government needs to retain the extra powers delegated by emergency laws "to protect our democracy." 'Bloody battlefield' Denys Plaud was also at the Bataclan on the night of the attacks. He credits his survival to the fact that, when the attackers burst in, he was up on the balcony where there was more room to move to the music. "I love to dance, and that saved my life," he told CNN days after his escape from the Bataclan. "It meant I was not in the direct line of fire from the terrorists' machine guns." Plaud hid in a tiny room at the venue with 15 others; they waited as the gunmen got closer and closer, even shooting at the partition that sheltered them: "I thought, 'Oh my God, I hope that wall will stand.'" "For three hours, we had to listen to the shooting," he remembers. "That was terrible. Every time we thought it would end, it was just time for the terrorists to get their weapons reloaded, and then they would shoot again." Eventually, the police arrived and led them to safety across what Plaud calls "the bloody battlefield," urging them not to look at the bodies of their fellow music fans. "But ... it was not a direct path, I had to look where I was putting my feet. ... There was no way but to look at death." A year on, he says, the memories are "very fresh ... it's just like it was yesterday." Artist turns Paris attacks ordeal into graphic novel A nation traumatized By late morning Sunday, the first flowers to remember victims were placed among the autumn leaves at the Place de la République, which became the center of the city's mourning and expressions of national unity after the attacks. For many Parisians, it is an opportunity to begin getting on with life. The year since the attacks has been filled with shock, grief and mourning -- for the relatives of the dead, for those who survived, and for France as a whole: The nation was left traumatized. Extra police and troops have been on the streets of France since January 2015, when terrorists attacked the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people: Armed officers now patrol outside tourist hot spots, schools, government and religious buildings. Operation Sentinel has seen the mobilization of 10,000 soldiers to monitor and protect more than 11,000 locations across the country -- 3,000 of them religious sites, the rest a mixture of key infrastructure, industrial plants and "symbolic" places around the country. And despite all the extra security on the streets, what happened in January and November 2015 -- and other incidents that followed in 2016, in Nice, Rouen and Magnanville -- have impacted the country's morale. Plaud says Paris itself was left "in shock." Anger at these events has been linked to a steep rise in xenophobia; according to the National Commission on Human Rights, or CCNDH, there were 429 reports of attacks on, and threats against, Muslims in France in 2015 -- a rise of 223% on the previous year. This "wave of aggression against Muslims" ranged from assaults on women wearing the hijab to graffiti on places of worship and halal butcher shops. In one incident, the door handle of a mosque was wrapped in bacon. The CCNDH says the majority happened in January and November. The attacks have also damaged France's prized tourism industry: Almost 2 million fewer visitors have come to the country over the past year -- international arrivals are down 8.1% so far in 2016. But Plaud says the country has seen troubled times before, and is sure to bounce back: "I am confident; in Parisian history there have been a lot of events like that -- war, civil war. But Paris has always been able to recover." #ParisResiste Balloons were released into the skies over Paris, and as darkness fell, thousands of lanterns were floated on the waters of the Canal St. Martin, close to the scene of several of the attacks. A social media campaign, #ParisResiste called on people to display lighted candles in the windows of their homes on Sunday evening, to "light up the city" and "brighten the future." Salines concedes the day will be a difficult one for many: "Some families have chosen to take a vacation and go abroad even, because there will be a lot of media attention and there will be a lot of archive footage of last year -- I'm sure it will be painful to see these images again." Plaud suffered flashbacks in the months after the attack that forced him to give up his job as a math and physics tutor, but says he is gradually recovering. This week he returned to the Bataclan for the first time. "I want[ed] to come back to pay my last homage to the victims and people who died there," he says. "It is important even if it is very strong, emotionally, to be here." Both Plaud and Salines say putting pen to paper has helped them through the past 12 months. "I wanted to write in order not to forget," Salines says. "The writing helped me, because it was the only way in the first days that I could think about what had happened ... not without pain, but being able to stay calm and to keep some distance between the pain and my thinking." The idea for his book, "The unspeakable, from A to Z" came, he says, from "the messages I received from friends and family -- lots of them started with the words, 'this is unspeakable,' 'we don't know what to say,' 'there are no words.' They had no words but I had lots! I started to make a list of words and ... little by little it grew and it grew into a book." He says the dictionary-like form his writings took helped reflect the rapidly changing emotions he experienced in the weeks and months after Lola's death. "It was very close to what I was experiencing in terms of the shift between very different moods, even happening all at the same time, within a few minutes, from crying to laughing. When you read you go from one word to another, from emotional feelings ... to very funny." The first entry in the book: A is for absurd. "Because Lola, and I am sure all the other young people who lost their lives that day, were total strangers to the situation, the fight that the terrorists have and it is profoundly unjust." For Plaud, revisiting his experiences to write about them "was very difficult [but] it was therapeutic." "It was a way to exorcise the demons and all the horror I saw that night. It was dangerous because sometimes I had to go deep inside my memories of death." 'Grieving never ends' "The grieving never ends," says Salines. "I am at a stage now where I know that things are relatively stable -- the pain will probably last for the rest of my life but I don't break down in tears three times a day as I was doing at the beginning." Salines is sustained by his work as chairman of one of the support groups for those affected by the events of November 13, and by his memories of Lola. "Her life was maybe short, but it was a full life, full of happiness," he says. A publisher of children's and young adult books, Lola loved to travel and had a passion for roller derby. "She had incredible energy. We didn't know how she could do so many things in a day." "She did a lot of good things in her life, she had a great deal of pleasure, she was very enthusiastic," he says. "She had a good life. Writing about it was maybe a way of convincing myself, but I feel pretty confident that my daughter's life was a good life." Plaud says for him, the time has come to move on. "It's been one year now and I feel like it's the end of my mourning." "It is a good thing that life has come back again," he says. "We have to keep the memory, but you also [must] not be stuck in that horror, [you must] keep on living."

This would be a horrifying experience to go through. I can't imagine how a father could handle that experience, especially the way that he learned about his daughter's tragedy. That would be just entirely too much to go through. How can can that even be processed? its just all seems so surreal, like something you would read about, but not actually go through.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 34 years old. The person has a high school degree or diploma. The person earns 60000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 3.0 in openness, 2.5 in conscientiousness, 2.5 in extraversion, 3.5 in agreeableness, and 2.0 in stability.

Iraqi Christians, scarred by Islamic State’s cruelty, doubt they will return to Mosul —  IRBIL, Iraq — At the evening service, the priest counseled forgiveness to a congregation with little reason to forgive. They were Christians from Mosul, brutalized by the Islamic State and betrayed, in some cases, by neighbors, and nothing — not the priest’s pleas, not his invocation of Cain and Abel — seemed likely to heal those scars. Khalid Ramzi, a congregant, seemed to choke on the sermon. “We can’t fall into the same hole twice. We don’t want our children to be raised in violence and fear,” he said, standing outside the church in Irbil. “Only in our dreams can we go back to Mosul.” When the militants swept into the city two years ago, Christians were ordered to convert, pay a tax or die. As the Islamic State pushed beyond the city, onto the plains of Nineveh, its advance scattered the rich patchwork of religious and ethnic minorities — Yazidis and Assyrians, Kurds and Shabaks — that made the area a microcosm of diverse Iraq and a place unlike perhaps any in the world. Churches were torched. Yazidis were massacred or enslaved. Villages emptied as hundreds of thousands of people fled. Iraqi forces advancing toward Mosul have recaptured some of the villages, raising the possibility of return for the minorities. But it is difficult to imagine the villages whole again, with their emptied streets and houses lying in ruin or despoiled by the militants. A new order in Mosul and the surrounding region already has begun to take shape, before troops even have entered the city. With competing visions, powerful players including Turkey, Iran, the Kurds and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government are jostling for influence. The battle will forge its own reality, with the violence possibly sending hundreds of thousands of people searching for shelter away from their homes. And the future of the region will be defined, in many ways, by who decides to return. [Islamic State is kidnapping thousands of people to use as human shields] In Shaqouli, an ethnically mixed village about 12 miles east of Mosul, a few villagers drove back two weeks ago, with one, Asem Hussein, making a forceful case that his neighbors will eventually follow. Some sort of munition had caved in his living room, leaving a tangle of concrete and rebar, and all he had been able to recover was a few blankets and an air conditioner that somehow had survived. “I am going to rebuild it and stay, and we will rebuild all ruined Iraqi villages,” he insisted. Shaqouli, he added, “will remain as mixed as it used to be — a mini-Iraq.” But the mayor, Mamel Qassim, who is Kurdish, had written off the place as lost. It was partly personal: During the Islamic State occupation, the militants had used his house as their headquarters. As a result, it had been crushed by an airstrike, the debris littered with copies of a weekly paper that the militants distributed. It was more than that, though. The Iraqi government — part of the sectarian political order that took hold after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 — was as weak as it ever had been, Qassim reckoned, and ill-equipped to protect minorities. Sunni Arabs from the village had fled or been forced to retreat toward Mosul along with the Islamic State, and the Kurds, like the mayor, had mostly moved to Irbil, in the semiautonomous Kurdish region. Only the members of the Shabak minority, who were without any powerful patron or a region to call their own, seemed inclined to move back. “It will never be good here,” said Qassim, adding that he intended to resign as mayor. “It will only get worse.” [Concerns about ‘collective punishment’ after Sunni Arabs flee Kirkuk] Iraq’s news media has been awash with photos and videos in recent days showing soldiers recapturing churches desecrated by the militants — with the implicit message that it will soon be safe for Christians to return. In some of the Christian villages around Mosul, residents said they did intend to move back, but they portrayed the move as more a responsibility than a choice. “We want to bring back the beauty of this area,” said Benham Shamani, a writer from Bartella, a majority-Christian town east of Mosul, invoking more than a thousand years of Christian heritage in the area. “Only the original people of the area can return this beauty. Only the people of this area can rebuild it,” Shamani said. In reality, though, Christians have been leaving Iraq for years, an exodus that began in earnest after the U.S.-led invasion. At the time, the country had around 1.5 million Christians; by the time of the Islamic State’s takeover of Mosul, they were believed to be fewer than 500,000. Now community leaders say at least a third of those who remained have left. In 2014, France said it would grant asylum to Christians forced to flee Mosul. Some community leaders criticized the move, saying it would devastate what remains of Iraq’s Christians. But even the community’s leaders concede it will be difficult to go back to Mosul. To return to the city would be to “remember all the pain, all the threats, all the killing, all the letters with bullets inside. We’ll remember the looks on the street,” said another priest at the Irbil church, the Rev. Zakareya Ewas, as families milled about after the service. The problems for Christians started before the Islamic State takeover, as the group’s predecessor, al-Qaeda, extended its grip in the city. Ewas said he received threatening phone calls and attempts at extortion. He stopped wearing his black robes and collar on the street. His wife covered her hair in an effort to blend in. Priests were murdered as Christians were targeted for their religion but also their perceived wealth, with many kidnapped for ransom. Ewas, a Syriac Orthodox priest, fled Mosul as the militants took over in 2014. The cross in his old church has been pulled down, he said, and the building now is used as a shelter for the militants’ livestock. His brother moved to Jordan two weeks ago after struggling to find work in Irbil — and after hearing several months ago that his yogurt factory in the city had been wiped out in a coalition airstrike. “Now there’s nothing for him to go back to,” Ewas said, adding that there were many others like his brother. If the Christians of Mosul did return, he said, “it will be just to sell their houses and leave.” Kareem Fahim reported from Shaqouli, Iraq. Mustafa Salim in Irbil and Aaso Ameen Shwan in Shaqouli also contributed to this report.

This was pretty troubling to read about the events going on overseas. The families are struggling so much and there's no hope in sight for them to get any relief. Looking over their backs all the time and trying to protect their children. Trying to maintain work available to support their family. I can't imagine what it would be like.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 28 years old. The person has a went to college but did not get a degree. The person earns 21000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.0 in openness, 7.0 in conscientiousness, 1.0 in extraversion, 5.0 in agreeableness, and 3.5 in stability.

Help Demand That Nosey The Elephant Be Rescued From Decades Of Abuse —  Nosey, a 34 year old female African elephant has been held captive and forced to live in solitary, for almost 3 decades. Nosey has been bound by chains and compelled to perform for public entertainment in circuses and forced to give rides to adults and children in between performances across the United States, for most of her life. This causes major stress to her health as well as to her psychological well being. Much of Nosey’s life has been spent in confinement inside of an inappropriately sized trailer and she is crated from one location to the next, receiving little exercise and no socialization which goes against the highly social nature of her spices. She has been seen to exhibit stiffness in her joints, indicating that she has arthritis which has likely been formed due to her years of longterm confinement. Since 1993, her owner, Hugo Tommy Liebel, has been cited by the the USDA over 200 times and has made 30 direct violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Regardless of these violations, Liebel’s license is still approved for renewal each year. Despite complaints being filed by numerous citizens and organizations looking to seek freedom for Nosey, there has been little or no response from the USDA. The department refuses to order a comprehensive medical exam for nosey after evidence has shown that she is suffering from chronic, untreated health problems and lives everyday in physical and psychological pain. The USDA has the power under the AWA as well as the responsibility to the animal’s well being to respond to complaints made by citizens to stop the repeated violations made by Nosey’s owner to confiscate her and release her into a true elephant sanctuary. Action must be taken NOW to stop the daily abuse to this animal.

I love elephants so much and every time I hear about them being abused this way it hurts my heart. I hate that people can be so cruel to animals in general, but to such sweet, gentle giants? It makes me so sad. And her name is Nosey. That's not even fair, someone needs to strip that awful man of that angelic creature.


Mom, 2 girls killed on Halloween trailer in Mississippi —  U.S. 80 in Newton County is still littered with the spoils of a night meant to be fun for children and families but now holds tragic memories for the small town of Chunky.   Skid marks, accident location paint, dried blood and Skid marks, accident location paint, dried blood and vehicle fluids remain after a pickup truck slammed into a small utility trailer on Monday, Halloween night on U.S. Highway 80 in Chunky, Miss., Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016. Mississippi Highway Patrol said the crash left a few people killed and several injured. (Photo: Rogelio V. Solis/AP) A pair of shoes lay separately among the candy and in the weeds on the side of the road, apparently knocked from the feet of their owner and left behind when the victims of a Halloween night vehicle accident were transported to hospitals in Jackson and Meridian. Some of them have life-threatening injuries, officials said. The shoes are not far from the scene where Kristina Shaver and her two daughters, Baylee, 8, and Brooke, 2, were fatally injured while riding in a trailer for a Halloween party Monday night.   The trailer was hit from behind by a pickup, authorities said.   The Shavers were among 10 on the trailer, but they were the only fatalities as of Tuesday. Community members said the others injured in the wreck were Shaver's middle child, McKensey, Shaver's sister, Melissa Cook, 31, and her children. Shaver's husband was killed in a car wreck earlier this summer, family friends said. Cook's husband died in 2012.   Kristina Shaver is shown in this photo of a Facebook Kristina Shaver is shown in this photo of a Facebook post. (Photo: The Clarion-Ledger) McKensey Shaver is the last living member of her immediate family. She is in critical condition at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.   UMMC confirmed they are treating five patients. Two pediatric patients are critical, and two are fair. Cook was in critical condition at UMMC as of 3 p.m. Tuesday.   Don Jones, who lives on Chunky Duffee Road, said his wife keeps count of the trick-or-treaters, and that the trailer had come by their home earlier in the evening.   "She was hollering, 'How cute, how cute!' so I came to the door and they were all there, just precious, just small kids. I guess door steps, you'd call them. And they were just having a good time," he said.   The tenor of the night changed when Jones and his family could hear sirens in the distance, he said.   "When the local fire department takes off, everyone can hear the sirens," he said.   Shortly after that, there were three helicopters landing on the ballfield not far from the wreck site, he said.   Mississippi Highway Patrol Spokesman Sgt. Andy West said the vehicle and trailer was turning off U.S. 80 around 7:45 p.m. when a Ford F-150 driven by Chase Cook, 20, who family friends say is not believed to be related to Melissa Cook, drove into the back of the trailer. West said that "a full investigation will be conducted into the cause of the wreck."   OTHER AREA ACCIDENT: Fiery fatal auto crash in Jackson   The tire marks on the road, highlighted in orange reconstruction paint, drew a fairly clear picture of where the vehicles collided and where they came to rest in a yard on the side of the highway. But it doesn't answer how or why.   "It would be inappropriate for us to speculate why the driver drove into the rear of that trailer, and we want to refrain from making any statements until the investigation is complete," West said.   The trailer was being pulled by a Jeep driven by Terry Smith, 58, of Chunky.   Newton County Elementary School Principal Jason Roberson said counselors were on campus Tuesday to help students and faculty with the impact of the accident.   "Any time you deal with loss, it's difficult, but when you're trying to explain it to children it compounds it even more," he said. "What we've focused on is remembering the good times we've had here."   Roberson said the counselors will remain on campus for the rest of the week.   "I've never dealt with anything of this magnitude, and it's been a lot to take in," he said. "Everybody's been touched by this."   Jones said he's praying for the families of the dead and injured. He said he doesn't know Cook, but he's praying for him, too.   "I pray for him because he's going to be scarred for life to know what happened when he hit that trailer," he said.

I'd bet money on the driver of the car that hit the trailer being a drunk driver. I feel like the amount of people who drive drunk - generally, but especially on holidays - is honestly alarming. And they're always so casual about it, like it's not a big deal and they aren't taking the lives of anyone they get remotely near while behind the wheel into their hands.


At least 10 hurt after massive Arizona apartment complex fire caught on video —  Ten people were hurt when a fire tore through a small apartment complex in Payson. Fire Chief David Staub says the fourplex is a total loss after an explosion ignited the blaze Saturday evening. The fire was reported after sundown and fire crews arrived to find the building completely engulfed.   Staub says eight people inside all suffered minor injuries except one person who was transported to a Maricopa County burn center. That person remains hospitalized in stable condition.   Two people who were outside the apartments also sustained minor injuries. They were treated at the scene.   It took crews about 10 minutes to get the fire under control after the gas company shut off gas in the neighborhood.   Staub says the cause remains under investigation.

Oh my gosh, I wonder what went wrong. Those poor people! I can't fathom what it would be like to just be going about my life when a sudden explosion turns my entire world upside down. Recovering from serious burns must be excruciating, I hate it when I burn my tongue. I hope they figure out what went wrong. Crazy to think how something so necessary can be so dangerous.


Aleppo’s oldest residents fear they’ll die alone —  BEIRUT — Before the war convulsed his native Syria, Marea Marea relished retirement. He enjoyed leisurely morning walks, played with his grandchildren and took afternoon catnaps. Then the fighting began in rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Airstrikes have pulverized his neighborhood, and a brutal siege has forced him to skimp on food so other members of his family have enough to eat. ADVERTISING Now the 70-year-old feels weak, frightened and helpless. “My entire life has been spent trying to build something for my family,” he said, speaking by Skype from his home in the war-divided city. “I built this home. My body aches from the decades of work that I did to make them a better life. But now this? There’s little dignity in this kind of life.” The war has taken an immense toll on the more than 200,000 people still in eastern Aleppo. Marea and other older residents face especially difficult circumstances, according to aid workers and doctors there. Some choose — or are asked — to make sacrifices for younger family members or are left to cope on their own after their children and grandchildren flee to safety in other countries. “People are being forced to make sacrifices, and this often involves the older people getting neglected,” said Bacry al-Ebeid, who distributes food to residents in rebel areas of Aleppo for Mercy-USA, a Michigan-based charity. [Darkness and fear in Aleppo as the bombs rain down] Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, has become perhaps the most important battleground in the conflict, which began in 2011 and has left more than 400,000 dead and millions displaced. Rebels seized the city’s eastern districts in 2012, and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have intensified efforts to take them back. If they do, it would mark a significant victory for the embattled leader. In recent months, warplanes operated by Assad’s government and its ally, Russia, have increasingly bombed hospitals and homes in the city’s opposition-held areas. Food and fuel shortages have worsened because of the siege imposed by pro-government forces, who control the city’s west end. As a result, residents and aid workers in eastern Aleppo say, it has become nearly impossible to find medicine to treat heart disease, diabetes, rheumatism and other conditions most commonly experienced by older people. Overstretched medical facilities must turn away people suffering from such conditions because of the overwhelming number of more-urgent cases, such as people with shrapnel wounds and other war-related injuries. Pablo Marco, Middle East operations manager for the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, said the situation is so bad that fewer than three dozen doctors are still working in eastern Aleppo. The area has only one functioning dialysis unit left, he said. “If that unit stopped working, then that would mean more deaths,” he said. “The doctors just don’t have the time and facilities to take care of chronic diseases that, if not properly treated, will kill you in a matter of weeks and months.” As some become frail, they might see themselves as a burden on their family, which can fuel anxiety, Ebeid said. Some families have had to take extreme measures and have abandoned older family members, he said. In Arab societies, older people generally live with their children until death. [Syrian regime and Russia may have killed more children in latest bombing] There are no reliable age breakdowns of people living in the city’s besieged eastern areas, but before the war, Aleppo had a population approaching 3 million. Hundreds of thousands of residents have fled since the conflict erupted. “In a lot of cases, though, what we see are elderly people who refuse to leave their homes,” Ebeid said. “So that means their families, when they flee to other countries, are forced to leave them behind.” In another neighborhood of eastern Aleppo, 83-year-old Reema Salama lives alone in the home where she raised her children. Most of her family escaped to Turkey last year, but Salama chose to stay put, she said during a recent interview over Skype. Because of the siege, she cannot leave, and her family cannot visit. She receives food from Ebeid’s organization but struggles to cook it, relying on neighbors for help. “I’m all alone! I’m going to die alone here!” she said before abruptly ending the conversation. Marea said he would never leave his home. To pay for it, he worked for years as a freelance farmhand and day laborer. But even if he tried to leave, the government’s siege would prevent him. So he spends most of his time at home feeling isolated and hoping airstrikes do not obliterate him and his family. “I’m afraid our house will get bombed but that we won’t die in the attack,” he said, describing the fate of many people in his area of town. “We’ll just be stuck in the rubble for days and slowly die.” He also thinks constantly about trying to balance what he and his 70-year-old wife, Ajoun, need to survive with the demands of the 10 children and grandchildren living with them. Already, the family struggles to care for one son, 45-year-old Ahmed, whose leg was amputated last year after shrapnel struck it during an attack. “We eat twice — once in the morning and once in the evening — because we are trying to reduce the amount we eat so the kids still have enough,” he said. He fears the effect this could have on his wife, who suffers from high blood pressure and rheumatism. Marea has received unexpected help from another son, Hameed, who was visiting from Turkey and became trapped in the city when the government imposed its siege several weeks ago. Asked whether Hameed intends to return to Turkey, Marea choked up. “No, he can’t go back. The siege. He can’t leave us here,” Marea said. Then, he said, “I’m an old man. I shouldn’t have to think about these kind of things.” Heba Habib in Stockholm and Zakaria Zakaria in Istanbul contributed to this report.

I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a war-torn country. Americans have it so much better than they realize and I don't understand why it's so hard for people to put themselves in others' shoes. I feel so much for this poor man that just wanted a peaceful retirement and to hang out with his family and now he and his wife are basically depriving themselves of food so that they have enough for the kids. It's depressing.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 49 years old. The person has a two year associate degree. The person earns 37000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.0 in openness, 6.5 in conscientiousness, 4.0 in extraversion, 6.0 in agreeableness, and 6.5 in stability.

India Kashmir: The teenager blinded by pellets —  Photographer Abid Bhat here describes the life of 14-year-old Insha Mushtaq, who lost vision in both her eyes after being hit by pellets in Indian-administered Kashmir. "I just want to ask the security personnel who fired pellets at me what my fault was," Miss Mushtaq says, as she stands by the same window she was sitting at when pellets blinded her. She has been in and out of hospitals for the past three months in an attempt to regain her vision. Nothing has worked so far, but she remains hopeful. Ms Mushtaq says she wanted to become a doctor before losing her vision. She brings out her text books to show me, and flips the pages though she cannot read them anymore. "I can only feel them now," she says tearfully. Concern in Kashmir over police pellet guns Photoshopped celebrities used for Kashmir pellet gun campaign She also shows me a school photo identity card. The continuing unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir has seen the deaths of 89 civilians with thousands injured. India blames Pakistan for stirring up violence in the region, a charge that it denies. Both countries claim Kashmir in its entirety but only control parts of it. The region has been a flashpoint for more than 60 years, sparking two wars between the countries. Within the Muslim-majority territory, some militant groups have taken up arms to fight for independence from Indian rule or a merger with Pakistan. And the widespread use of pellet guns to quell protests in recent months has led to more than a thousand people sustaining eye injuries. Pellet guns - a form of shotgun - were first used by the police as a non-lethal weapon to quell protests in Indian-administered Kashmir in 2010. They are normally used for hunting animals. The gun fires a cluster of small, round-shaped pellets, which resemble iron balls, at high velocity. A pellet gun cartridge can contain up to 500 such pellets. When the cartridge explodes, the pellets disperse in all directions. They are less lethal than bullets but can cause serious injuries, especially if they hit the eye. Doctors treating pellet gun wounds in Kashmir told the Indian Express newspaper they were seeing "sharp and more irregular-shaped pellets" which were causing "more damage" this time. Miss Mushtaq's family is struggling to come to terms with her injuries. Her mother bursts into tears as a family member helps Ms Mushtaq don a scarf and sunglasses to hide her eyes and scarred face. "If she was killed, I would have been able to overcome the grief but the sight of her blinded eyes kills me every day," her father says as he shows me pictures of her daughter in the hospital ICU. As for Miss Mushtaq herself, she is trying to stay positive. She greets every guest coming to enquire about her health with a smile, drinks her tea and tries to console her family members and relatives. Later, she goes out for a walk with some of her relatives, smile still intact. But, for her and many others like her, it is going to be a long and difficult road ahead.

The situation in Kashmir has been difficult for some time. I'm not sure, though, if India wants to keep good relations with their provinces, why they would do these kinds of things. These pellet firing weapons are too random, with results like we see in the article. They need to take a more benevelont attitude if they want to keep the region.


Kenya deports South Sudan opposition official, despite threats against him —  The Kenyan government on Friday deported a senior South Sudan opposition member as tensions rose over its peacekeeping efforts in its war-scarred neighbor.   Kenyan authorities have reacted angrily to a U.N. decision this week to dismiss the Kenyan general in charge of the peacekeeping force there, for failing to protect civilians during a recent spasm of violence. Kenya has been an important force for stability in South Sudan, contributing about 1,000 troops and absorbing refugees.   James Gatdet Dak, the official deported Friday, has served as a spokesman for the main South Sudanese rebel group led by former vice president Riek Machar. Since December 2013, that group has fought on and off against government forces led by President Salva Kiir. The conflict has killed tens of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more.   Some Kenyan officials suggested that Dak’s deportation was related to a Facebook post in which he expressed support for the removal earlier this week of Lt. Gen. Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki, the Kenyan top officer in the U.N. mission in South Sudan, known by the acronym UNMISS.   In the post Wednesday, Dak wrote: “We welcome the change in the UNMISS Force Command in South Sudan. The peacekeepers failed to protect civilians during the crisis right in the capital, Juba, and in other parts of the country.”   A U.N. report this week blamed Ondieki for a “lack of leadership” and a “chaotic and ineffective response” to the surge of violence in Juba in July. During that fighting, dozens of South Sudanese civilians were raped and killed, mostly by government forces. Several foreign aid workers were also brutally raped.   In a statement Friday, Machar said he told the Kenyan government that Dak “should not be deported to Juba due to profound fear for his life.” It said Dak had been “arrested from his residence” in Nairobi.   With government forces controlling Juba and bitter tensions between the two groups, human rights experts say the threat to Dak is very real.   “In colluding with South Sudan and deporting James Gatdet Dak, Kenya has exposed him to a serious risk of persecution,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch.   After Ondieki’s dismissal, Kenyan officials threatened to withdraw its peacekeeping troops from South Sudan, calling the deployment “no longer tenable.” Kenya’s contingent is important because of its size and because it has proved difficult to recruit soldiers in the rest of the world for the mission. There are 16,000 U.N. peacekeepers in South Sudan.   The Kenyan Foreign Ministry said Ondieki was fired unfairly and used as a scapegoat for the mission’s institutional failings.   “Regrettably, instead of addressing these shortcomings directly, the United Nations has instead opted to unfairly attribute them to a single individual,” the ministry said in a statement.   The row between the United Nations and the Kenyan government underscores the often tense relations between the world body and the countries that deploy troops to peacekeeping missions. While U.N. officials say they have a responsibility to dismiss poorly performing soldiers, they are often reluctant to do so, for fear of alienating the few countries willing to send forces to far-flung missions.   Kenya also hosts tens of thousands of South Sudanese refugees, mostly in its Kakuma camp. Earlier this year, Kenya threatened to shutter the camp. Though the government later withdrew that plan, its threat was enough to rattle the humanitarian community.   Since July, when battles between the forces of Kiir and Machar broke out in the capital, fighting has resumed across much of the country, even as Machar and other opposition leaders fled the country. Machar is in South Africa.   The United States and other Western intermediaries have lobbied futilely for the restoration of a peace agreement that was only tenuously enforced before the July fighting.

I don't know why these problems continue in Africa without the Western World doing something about it. It's largely the fault of the former colonial powers that things are such a mess there, and it's not going to go away. The human cost is insanely high, people should not be living like this in the modern world.


The person is male. Racially, the person is white. The person is 28 years old. The person has a postgraduate / professional degree. The person earns 165000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.75 in openness, 6.25 in conscientiousness, 3.25 in extraversion, 6.75 in agreeableness, and 6.0 in stability.

The human and animal costs of India's unregulated coal industry —  India is one of the largest producers of coal in the world and more than half of its commercial energy needs are met by coal. But unregulated mining has caused serious health and environmental issues, and led to growing conflicts between elephants and humans. In the coal-rich central state of Chhattisgarh, for example, fly ash has caused respiratory problems and serious illnesses like tuberculosis among people, but their troubles don't end there. Forests are being cleared for coal mining and wild elephants are entering villages in search of food and attacking people. Photojournalist Subrata Biswas has documented the fallout of India's dependence on coal. "As thousands of acres of forest land are destroyed to mining, foraging elephants attracted by the crops in the fields often enter villages, resulting in an alarmingly high number of human-elephant conflict situations," says Biswas. Officials estimate elephants have been responsible for 8,657 incidents of property damage and 99,152 incidents of crop damage in Chhattisgarh between 2005 and 2014. "We were sleeping when the elephants broke into our room. Somehow we managed to escape but I fractured my left leg when a large part of the wall fell on my leg. My husband saved my life," says Rujri Khalkho, 70, whose home was damaged by a herd of wild elephants almost a year ago. A compensation of 10,000 rupees ($149; £114) has not been enough to repair her house or pay for her medical care. Deaths of elephants due to electrocution have become common in the state. In Dharamjaigarh, the most affected area, officials have recorded 30 elephant and 75 human deaths so far. In 2009, Kanti Bai Sau, 40, lost her home and farm to an open-cast coal mine. She was promised compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,980; £2,290) and a job to a family member, but received neither. Her son died last year of respiratory complications. "There is no fresh air to breath, fresh water to drink. Coal has usurped everything here." "We lived next to this mine for almost 10 years and watched helplessly as our wells went dry, forests disappeared and fields become unproductive," says Girja Bai Chauhan. "We have lost almost eight acres of our fields to the mine and authorities haven't fulfilled a single promise they made while acquiring land. They sent us into a dark future and unhealthy environment to live and breathe in." Pipelines carry fly ash slurry from a local thermal power power plant in Korba to a fly ash pond. Environment activists say that every year approximately 50 million tonnes of fly ash is generated by power plants in Chhattishgarh but not even the half of this amount have been reutilized to reduce the pollution from fly ash. Fly ash is known to contain trace elements such as arsenic, barium and mercury among others, and unlined ponds like this could be polluting groundwater by leaching. "The ash is everywhere. When the wind blows, everything is coated with a layer of white grey ash. The road, ponds, our houses, sometimes even our spectacles get coated with a fine layer of the ash," says Biswas. Rohit Rathia, 55, suffers from tuberculosis. He lives in a village next to an open cast mine where lung diseases such as coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP), silicosis and tuberculosis have become common ailments.

I find it disturbing that thousands of acres of forest land are destroyed to mining, foraging elephants attracted by the crops in the fields often enter villages, resulting in an alarmingly high number of human-elephant conflict situations. This shouldnt be. This is wrong. I mean the selfishness of some people shouldnt be a problem for all


Animals Rescued From the 'World’s Worst Zoo' —  An animal-welfare organization reflects on its nerve-wracking rescue—and what it might mean for troubled zoos around the world. Update: October 14—This story has been updated to include more information about the care of animals at the zoo, and to clarify the nature of the 2014 conflict between Hamas and Israel. When a rescue team arrived to evacuate a closing zoo near the Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis in late August, just 15 animals were still alive—the survivors from what had once been a collection of hundreds of animals. They included Laziz, a nine-year-old Bengal tiger that is the last tiger in Gaza, according to Four Paws, the Vienna-based animal-welfare nonprofit that led the rescue. There were also five monkeys, an emu, a pelican, two buzzards, two porcupines, two tortoises, and a doe. The doe had lost her fawn to wounds shortly before the rescuers arrived. Opened in 2007 on three and a half acres next to an amusement park, the Khan Younis Zoo has long been called “the world’s worst zoo” by animal-welfare groups such as Four Paws and various international media outlets. Animals there were reported to have starved to death during military conflicts between Gaza’s Hamas-led government and neighboring Israel. And last year, the surviving animals began sharing their cramped cages with the dead: More than 50 dead animals—including Laziz’s mate—were taxidermied by the zoo staff. (See "Tiger’s Death Raises Question: What Makes a Good Zoo?") A seven-week conflict in 2014 hastened the decision to close the zoo. The conflict stemmed from the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers on the West Bank. Israel linked the crimes to Hamas, and began making hundreds of arrests in the case, including many of Hamas’ West Bank leaders. Hamas later began firing rockets at civilian areas in Israel, which retaliated by bombing sites in Gaza. The United Nations reported that nearly 2,200 people were killed in the conflict, more than 2,100 of them Palestinians. It’s unclear precisely what led to the animals’ deaths at the zoo. The zoo itself was not bombed during the 2014 conflict, and animal-welfare groups say it had a troubled history of caring for animals. Abu Diab Oweida, the Palestinian businessman who owned the zoo, said many animals died during that conflict, and that the mummifications were an effort by the zoo’s staff “to prove to the whole world that even animals (were) affected.” Oweida previously blamed a 2009 conflict for the death of several animals in the zoo, some of which also were mummified. How It Happened Four Paws and its director of emergency response, Amir Khalil, had sought for months to close the zoo and transfer the animals to sanctuaries. In late August of this year, the ambitious rescue plan became reality. “The idea to close (the zoo came in) April of last year,” said Khalil, an Egyptian-born veterinarian who lives in Austria. “It was a concept last September. It was a plan this April. It was a mission in August.” Khalil needed to negotiate with four people: Oweida and three of his sons. In May they agreed on the concept of evacuating the zoo. (Also see "Animals Starving in Venezuela Zoos.") “I decided to donate the animals to save what remained of (them), to live safely inside a nature reserve and in peace and security,” Oweida said. (Read about the tunnels of Gaza in National Geographic magazine.) The rescue itself was complicated, “a complex coordination between Israeli, Palestinian, and international officials,” according to a spokesperson for the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a branch of the Ministry of Defense that works with the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and with international organizations working in both territories. Israel has not occupied Gaza since 2005, but retains various controls of its trade, border traffic, sea traffic, and air space. The rescue “was not easy,” Khalil said. “To be neutral is not easy. I think Four Paws was a form of mediator between three, four countries”—Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian governments of Hamas and Fatah Khalil and Four Paws carried out the multiday rescue in the midst of a military conflict this past August, crossing disputed borders as unseen Israel Defense Forces aircraft dropped bombs on military targets in the Gaza. Khalil has worked to save animals from crisis situations before, including the 2011 Libyan uprising that toppled Muammar Qaddafi. But the Khan Younis mission, he says, was one of the toughest. “In terms of the (mission), it went quite well,” team member Ioana Dungler says. “In terms of time, it was quite exhausting. On a (difficulty) scale of 1 to 10, it was an 8.” Animal Rescue The plans for the mission began to take shape in April 2015, when Khalil first visited Khan Younis and was horrified by the mummified animals. He soon began negotiating with Oweida and three of his sons. First, Four Paws would pay for the animals’ feeding. Next, it would cover all of the zoo’s operational costs, including staff salaries. It also removed the cadavers from public view. The final condition was that Oweida agreed not to work with animals again upon closure of the zoo. (See "Opinion: Killing Healthy Zoo Animals Is Wrong—And the Public Agrees.") Finally, in mid-August, Khalil led a 14-person team to the zoo. The team departed from the Erez border crossing in southwest Israel. Shortly before they crossed the border, a rocket from Gaza landed in the Israeli city of Sderot. Khalil said he could see smoke from the Erez border crossing. As the rescuers headed to the zoo, the Israel Defense Forces launched 50 retaliatory airstrikes at Hamas targets in Gaza. Nevertheless, Khalil said the team felt “safe and secure.” “Four Paws was checking what was going on,” he explained. “Locally, we were informed of anything happening. ... I was not worried about security, but about the mission.” (Also see "Jerusalem Zoo Struggles to Remain Common Ground for Israelis, Palestinians.") The team arrived at Khan Younis on August 22 to heartbreaking news: A baby deer, which had suffered during its few weeks of life, had died the day before. Four Paws prepared the surviving animals for their journey to new homes. The group spent August 23 loading the animals into crates, placed on a truck. The rescue became official when the team crossed back into Israel early on August 25. From there, team members escorted the animals to their new homes. Where Things Stand Four Paws has also transferred five Gaza lions and 15 other wild animals to sanctuaries. Now four active zoos remain in the Strip. Khalil says that Palestinian authorities are hoping to close them all. Alan Knight, chief executive of the U.K.-based International Animal Rescue, says the Khan Younis mission was a milestone in animal rights. “We are of course delighted that this terrible zoo has finally been closed and the surviving animals have been saved, thanks to Four Paws,” Knight said. “The success of the rescue operation proves that … extraordinary things can be achieved with passion and determination. Suffering animals should not be forgotten or overlooked, even in the midst of human conflicts or natural or man-made disasters. “We must all continue to strive to drive up the welfare of animals in world zoos. And if they can’t meet even the most basic standards, we must work toward getting them closed down.” Ahmad Safi, executive director of the Palestinian Animal League, also praised the rescue but tempered his words with concern about unresolved issues in Gaza. “While we are delighted that the individual animals have now been moved to safety and can begin to enjoy life in a sanctuary environment,” he says, “we are concerned that simply removing animals while failing to acknowledge and tackle the wider issues at play — such as wildlife trafficking and commercialization of wild animals in the Gaza Strip — means that these animals may be replaced and the good work done recently will simply be part of a vicious cycle which continues.” Khalil added that local authorities in Gaza have expressed interest in creating new legislation on wild animals. At the moment, “there is no legislation, no law”—a situation that results in “wild animals [being] smuggled and kept in poor cages.” “There are no current plans for assistance,” he adds, though “we asked the authorities in Gaza to … issue a regulation to keep wild animals in captivity [and] stop [animal] smuggling from Egypt.” A New Life for Rescued Animals Of the Khan Younis survivors, Laziz had the longest journey to his new home—the Lionsrock Big Cat Sanctuary in South Africa, where he’ll live on a hectare with grass, trees, and a bathing area. Lionsrock, run by Four Paws, is fenced in and patrolled regularly for poachers. The buzzards may eventually be released into the wild. All of the other Khan Younis animals except the monkeys—four vervets and a macaque, which are bound for the Israeli Primate Sanctuary Foundation—went to the New Hope Centre sanctuary in Jordan. They’ll eventually move to Al Ma’wa for Nature and Wildlife, a Jordanian sanctuary run by Four Paws and the Princess Alia Foundation. But the animals’ problems may not be over. “Our experience rescuing and rehabilitating wild animals that have spent years in captivity—often in appalling and traumatic conditions—has taught us that this can lead to a wide range of physical and psychological problems,” Knight says. “Some animals have suffered lengthy periods of starvation and need treatment for malnutrition and dehydration. Others, like the tiger in Gaza, have been fed an entirely unsuitable diet”—Laziz was fed chicken, which Dungler says tigers should not eat—“that, coupled with constant confinement and an inability to exercise, leads to obesity and the many diseases associated with that. “On a positive note,” he adds, “we have also learned that with expert treatment and care, in time even the most damaged animals can be rehabilitated and given a second chance in life. Some, but not all, can even be returned to the wild.” What’s Next for Zoo Survivors The two Palestinian governments, Hamas and Fatah, have recently approached Four Paws about creating a sanctuary in Gaza. But “how far it is from reality,” says Khalil, “I don’t know.” There are currently just 12 veterinarians in the Gaza Strip, with four set to retire soon. (Five veterinarians assisted Four Paws during the rescue, with Khalil and his team providing on-hand training.) Khalil says he’s worried about the remaining Gaza zoos—and about other zoos in conflict zones that require immediate attention. Some of these, he says, can be found in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Venezuela. But that’s a very partial list. “There are,” he says, “hundreds of such zoos worldwide.” Time will tell if Four Paws’ inspiring work can be replicated at some of them.

Why do human have to be so wicked? I capture innocent animal from their homes, enslave them and deprive them of the right treatment. It is a very sad and wicked situation. We should leave things the way they are if we know we are not capable of affording these animals what nature will give them. We dont have to keep spoiling everything the nature begot in the name of domination. It is not right!!!


See how people are being wasted. It is always a very sad situation. Where is humanity? I hope we can be much more cautious and take necessary precautions when we should. The life we have is just one and we only live it once. More attention should be paid to guarding it judiciously. It is sad the way the life was lost...I wish I can help prevent it though.


Airstrikes kill more than 40 and wound scores in Yemeni port city —  CAIRO — Fighter jets from a U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition struck a security complex in the western Yemeni city of Hodeidah late Saturday night, killing at least 43 and injuring scores more, according to Yemeni officials and local news reports. Many of those killed were inmates being held in prisons on the site, located in the city’s al-Zaydiya enclave. Hodeidah, a port city on the Red Sea, is held by the rebel Houthis, who also control the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen. Saba, the government news agency, reported that 43 were killed and that dozens were wounded. According to other news reports, the death toll is at least 60. Images of bodies covered in blankets, purportedly from the attacks, were shown on local news channels and on social media. In a statement, the Saudi-led alliance said the Houthis were using a building at the complex “as a command and control center for their military operations” and said “targeting protocols and procedures were followed fully.” In Yemen’s civil conflict, which began in March 2015, the Houthis are aligned with loyalists of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudi-led coalition, backed by the United States and other Western powers, is trying to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to power. Hadi was driven into exile last year, and he is now based in the southern port city of Aden. Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Muslim monarchy entered the war in large part because of concerns of Iranian influence in the region. That Shiite theocracy is widely perceived to be backing the Shiite Houthi rebels. The airstrikes in Hodeidah come on the same day Hadi rejected a new U.N. peace proposal that would have sidelined him and given the Houthis prominent roles in a new government. More than 10,000 people have died in the conflict, many of them civilians who were killed by Saudi-led coalition bombings, according to the United Nations. Millions more are suffering from hunger, illness and displacement as the nation is now in the throes of a humanitarian disaster. Earlier this month, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes killed more than 100 people, most of them civilians, when warplanes targeted a funeral hall in Sanaa. The coalition later claimed responsibility, saying that the bombings were a result of receiving faulty information. Speaking after meeting U.N. envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Hadi said that the agreement would “reward” the Houthis and that it “only opens a door towards more suffering and war and is not a map for peace,” according to the Saba news agency.

WE keep fighting avoidable battles that leads to avoidable wars thereby losing lives and properties. We gather to scatter, we build to destroy. It is sad that the bigger countries keep maltreating the smaller ones and expect them to be silent about it. We all should embrace love and unity. That is where the strength of the world is.


'They Were Just Like Us, and They Lost Everything' —  Can empathy for refugees be taught? A few weeks ago, I scrambled to evacuate my area with the only five items I could grab—my phone, passport, water, money, and medicine—in the 30 seconds before I had to flee. Many of the roughly 65 million refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people around the world today have had to make panicked choices like these; more than 4,000 have died at sea in overcrowded boats and rafts attempting to reach Europe from the Middle East. On Thursday last week, more than 200 additional people lost their lives in two separate shipwrecks off Libya. But my own “escape” was far away from that, on the safety of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had organized the Forced From Home exhibit. The aim was, in part, to put the staggering numbers of the crisis into tangible terms for those of us who don’t have to contemplate actually being forced from home. So I took on the identity of an asylum-seeker from Honduras while my tour guide, Ahmed Abdalrazag, pled with the group to hurry up. If we were really fleeing, he explained, our time would be up and it might be too late. We got on a raft like the ones in which so many have risked, and lost, their lives in recent years—though this one stayed on dry land—and later, we were detained at a fenced border where our various legal classifications determined our future. At each stop, hardships from the journey forced us to give up one item, until we were left empty-handed in front of staged refugee tents—where in real life another series of ordeals await those who make it that far. MSF, or Doctors Without Borders, the international aid group and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is touring the exhibit through five U.S. cities this fall, with a series of West Coast stops planned for next year. So far, according to an MSF spokesman, more than 17,000 people have attended, including over 3,400 students. MSF provides medical and related humanitarian aid in over 60 countries, often in dangerous circumstances—the group describes its mission as assisting “victims of conflict, natural disasters, epidemics, or healthcare exclusion.” In Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan recently, MSF-supported hospitals and the people who work there have themselves been victims of conflict. With the Forced From Home exhibit, MSF is trying to communicate, in concrete terms, the reality of people fleeing from those places and elsewhere, including Burundi, South Sudan, and Central America. Official action to mitigate this reality has been frustratingly slow. It has been more than two years since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) first reported that the number of displaced people worldwide had surpassed the figures following World War II.  But as my colleague Uri Friedman wrote in September, the UN General Assembly only recently held its inaugural Summit for Refugees and Migrants, and the declaration that emerged from the meeting delays specific measures by UN member states for two more years. The timeline of the UN plan is not comforting to the refugees or concerned observers. The crisis figures are familiar, but remain unfathomable—one in 113 people displaced “by conflict and persecution in 2015;” and 54 percent of 21 million refugees from just three volatile countries: Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. It’s easy to be numbed by the numbers. Or even actively repelled—across Europe and the United States, 2016 has seen a surge of anti-refugee protests and rhetoric conflatingrefugees and terrorists—sentiments that influence elections and produce significant legislative and societal results. In a sense, the refugee crisis has helped generate a corresponding crisis in empathy. But if national and international political solutions seem sluggish or even impossible, what hope is there for refugees in the meantime if not for the empathy of individuals? Where there is a confluence of human suffering and nationalistic backlash, can empathy be taught, sparked, or successfully deployed? The MSF exhibit can be seen as a test of these questions. It creates an empathetic response by tying the visitor’s experience to an individual’s—each participant is assigned a specific displaced person’s identity, and each tour is given by an aid-worker who has served in an MSF camp. Throughout the journey, the guides share their own personal stories about people they lived with, worked with, and ministered to, further illuminating the individual suffering behind the numbers. Abdalrazag, a physician with MSF originally from Iraq, first got involved with the organization when he was in a camp as a refugee. On his tours, he talks about a friend of his who, after living in a refugee camp tent for years, so desperately missed a wall to lean his back on that he hugged the first wall he saw in his new home. After the tour, Abdalrazag admitted that this was his own experience, one he sometimes obscures because his memories are painful to recount. Another guide, Sarah Khenati, a psychologist with MSF-France who has worked in the Central African Republic (CAR) and the West Bank, shares a story on her tours about a woman who was raped and impregnated while fleeing her home, then involves her groups in the ensuing MSF discussion about how best to treat the woman after her psychotic breakdown. Tatiana Chiarella, an MSF nurse from Brazil who has been touring with the exhibit, explained how she sees the value of these kinds of personal stories: “For people living in the U.S., or even my people in Brazil, we are so far from the situation that you may hear their stories but you don’t realize it could happen to any one of us.” The people she treated “were just like us, they were doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers, and suddenly this happened—they have war in their countries and they have to flee for their life and for their families—and they lost everything.” Maybe it’s strange to shift the discussion of a massive problem down to the granular level, especially when the world needs a response to match the scale of the crisis. Yet individuals generate a human response that statistics can’t. Updated crisis figures from UNHCR don’t go viral. Images of a drowned Syrian toddler on a beach in Turkey, or a wounded boy in an Aleppo ambulance, do. And they focus observers, however briefly, on the human cost of conflict.   Still, the problem is bigger than the tragedies of Alan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh, so the question remains whether concentrating on a single victim can generate an empathy that expands to include others suffering outside those particular frames. According to Jamil Zaki, assistant professor of psychology and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory, even though empathy is a fundamental human emotion, people are not exactly wired for a globalized response. “When we evolved, we were in small groups of interdependent individuals, so the people that you would run into and subsequently empathize with were probably family or extended family,” he explained. “And nowadays, we’re given the unprecedented opportunity to empathize, reach out to and help, not just the people who are right around us, but people all around the world. That’s a really enormous challenge as well as an opportunity, and I think that sometimes, our more evolutionarily old or primitive … emotional responses are not really perfectly designed for the modern world.” This is even true of people who are already inclined to be sympathetic to refugees—the people, in other words, likely to visit an exhibit like MSF’s in the first place. On the tour I took, I met Cameron, a student from Charleston, South Carolina, who said: “It pains me to see how unaccepting communities can be of refugees especially when a good amount of people in the U.S. can trace their ancestry to people who left their home because of economic or political issues.” He added, “I think it definitely made me more empathetic and understanding because you only get so much information from the news and other media sources.” U.S. President Barack Obama, in his 2006 Northwestern University commencement speech, called attention to what he saw as a national “empathy deficit.” He advised the graduates that, in a culture that does not encourage empathy, “as you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier.  There’s no community-service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You’ll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what’s going in your own little circle.” That warning came 10 years ago; five years before the Syrian Civil War began, and eight years before UNHCR first identified a new record in the number of refugees worldwide. As David Desteno wrote for The Atlantic last summer, a recent study from the University of Michigan found, based on empathy assessments of 13,000 college students between 1979 and 2009, that “levels of compassion and empathy are lower now than at any time in the past 30 years, and perhaps most alarming, they are declining at an increasing rate.” If we think of empathy as malleable, it’s an emotion that we can actively choose to engage with and develop. The barrier that the MSF exhibit and other calls to empathy might bump up against is our basic wiring: If our relationship to empathy is naturally individual and impulsive—Zaki describes it as “staccato”—how do we create the sustained empathy suited to an ongoing and outsized crisis? Will the impact of an exhibit like Forced from Home—or photos of children whose lives have been ended or upended by war—be momentary or lasting? And what difference does any one person’s feelings make to finding a genuine solution? Some of the answers may lie in the way we think about empathy. If we think of it as malleable, it’s an emotion that we can actively choose to engage with and develop. Zaki emphasizes that empathy can be strengthened with practice: “Empathy is under our control more than we think it is. ... It’s our responsibility to exercise empathy responsibly, and it’s an opportunity for us to connect with more and more people if we work hard at building it.” Most importantly, Zaki says, “convincing people that they can build their empathy actually helps them to build [it].” He points to training programs that can change people’s responses to others’ suffering. A sampling of these empathy interventions across the country range from increasing care for homeless people in the Bay Area, to teaching empathy in middle schools to prevent bullying, to training police officers in Washington state to have compassion for citizens with mental illness so that they can be helped or hospitalized rather than arrested, though it’s too early to judge their effects. The refugee and the empathy crises can—but don’t have to—leave us with an action crisis. Even if MSF succeeds in generating empathy, the feeling by itself is not a solution. Still, it’s hard to see how there can be a solution without it.

There should be empathy to refugees. They didnt chose their situation. They are just victim of circumstances. I wish I can really help them. More love and support should be given to them. I dont imagine myself losing all the things I have. I cant count the number of times people have lost their homes and all


Civilians shot, bodies hung from poles in Mosul, Iraqi sources say —  As fighting continued in and around Mosul on Friday, civilians caught in crossfire have a stark choice: whether to flee or stay huddled inside their homes.   Many residents tell CNN the intensity of the fighting and the airstrikes in eastern parts of the city limited their options. Still, tens of thousands have chosen the escape route. More than 47,730 people have been displaced because of the ongoing military operations to retake Mosul from ISIS, according to the International Organization for Migration. Roughly 12,800 people have fled since Tuesday, the organization said. Other residents of Mosul have simply chosen to heed the Iraqi Security Forces instructions to stay in their homes if they feel safe enough inside. Still others are too scared to leave their homes, because of ISIS' campaign of terror against the civilians. Witnesses told CNN among the dozens executed this week, more than 30 people were shot in the head for having cell phones. Their bodies were left at various intersections across Mosul as a warning. The bodies are not being removed as residents fear reprisals from ISIS militants, witnesses said. Here are some of the latest developments in the battle for Mosul: The UN human rights office released a report Friday, confirming that at least 60 civilians have been killed in Mosul this week, and reported new details of alleged atrocities by ISIS fighters. On Wednesday evening, ISIS reportedly killed 20 civilians at the Ghabat military base in northern Mosul on charges of leaking information, the UN body said. "Their bodies were also hung at various intersections in Mosul, with notes stating: 'decision of execution' and 'used cell phones to leak information to the ISF.' " On Tuesday, ISIS shot and killed 40 civilians in Mosul after accusing them of "treason and collaboration" with Iraqi security forces, according to a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. "The victims were dressed in orange clothes marked in red with the words: 'traitors and agents of the ISF.' Their bodies were then hung on electrical poles in several areas in Mosul city," the report said.   Local ISIS commanders have started fleeing in some neighborhoods, residents said, leaving behind trained teenage ISIS combatants to fight Iraqi forces. Mosul residents said they fear these young fighters as much, if not more, than other ISIS militants because they have been brainwashed, have no fear and have a great amount of zealotry after being indoctrinated and trained for two years. The UNHCR report said ISIS had "deployed what it calls the 'sons of the caliphate' in the alleys of the old town of Mosul, wearing explosive belts. We are concerned that these may be teenagers and young boys." ISIS posted video footage Wednesday, "showing four children, believed to be between 10 and 14 years old, shooting to death four people for spying for the ISF and the Peshmerga," the report said, referring to Iraqi and Kurdish forces. UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein cited "heartbreaking images" of ISIS forcing children to carry out executions and reports of women being "redistributed" among ISIS fighters, as evidence of the "numbing and intolerable" suffering of civilians in Mosul and other ISIS-held areas. He called on Iraqi authorities to ensure the perpetrators of such abuses are dealt with according to the rule of law so as to limit revenge attacks and help communities rebuild. Senior ISIS leader killed In another development, Mahmoud Shukri al Nuaimi, a senior ISIS commander, has been killed in the battle for Mosul, the terror group's last major stronghold in Iraq, Iraqi military intelligence sources tell CNN. Al Nuaimi, also is known as Sheikh Faris, was killed Tuesday in an Iraqi-led coalition airstrike in western Mosul, the sources said. ISIS confirmed his death in a video montage, referring to him as "the martyr of the battle." The Iraqi sources told CNN that Nuaimi was formerly a high-ranking intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's intelligence services. In Mosul's east, residents said ISIS militants were forcing them from their homes, either to booby trap the houses or to take them over as fighting positions. Militants have reportedly left barrels of crude oil at major intersections, ready to be set afire to hamper Iraqi advances. ISIS has also used white flags to disguise suicide car bombs in Mosul, according to Saban Al Numan, an Iraqi counterterrorism official. The battle for Mosul is difficult, slow and complicated, Numan said. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed victory last month at the start of the long-awaited offensive on Mosul, but he warned the effort could take time. ISIS, an agile enemy, has been preparing its defenses for two years. It takes advantage of the terrain, a network of tunnels and booby-trapped buildings, to great effect. US military officials estimate some 3,000 to 5,000 ISIS fighters are in Mosul. An additional 1,500 to 2,000 fighters may be waiting outside the city limits.

The ISIS need to be stopped. They cant keep killing people indiscriminately and feel they can do anyhow they want. With the level at which they operate, I wish more global powers will be raised against them to stop the nuisance they creating in the world. More attempt should be made to clip their wings.


Sally Brampton: Journalist killed herself after 'missed opportunities' —  Sally Brampton, founding editor of Elle magazine in the UK, killed herself after health professionals "missed opportunities" to offer her help, an inquest has heard. Ms Brampton, 60, who wrote a Daily Mail advice column, drowned after walking into the sea near her home on 10 May. Hastings Coroners' Court heard she was "in crisis" in March 2016 and had sought help from a psychiatrist and GP. But "that help did not come", assistant coroner James Healy-Pratt added. Ms Brampton, from St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, was pulled ashore at Galley Hill, Bexhill, on 10 May. The agony aunt, who had spoken out publicly about her long-running battle with depression, had been referred to local mental health services two months earlier, the inquest heard. However, she was not offered any help and she again contacted a GP in April. Psychiatrist's letter It was agreed she was "out of crisis" at this stage. However, the coroner heard her full clinical details - including a letter from her private psychiatrist - had not been provided to the relevant services. The letter, dated 19 March, stated Ms Brampton was "in crisis" and having "strong suicidal thoughts". It said Ms Brampton was having feelings of "hopelessness and helplessness", adding that she had spent most of the last week in bed and had hardly left the house. Ms Brampton had "disengaged" from local services and had "painted a very jaundiced view of them", the letter added. Mr Healy-Pratt said there was "a missed opportunity" to help Ms Brampton in March and more information should have been provided before the second referral. "However, we don't know that those missed opportunities would have changed Sally's outcome and that is an important factor," he added. Mr Healy-Pratt said he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Ms Brampton wanted to walk into the sea and he recorded a verdict of suicide. A 'bright star' Christine Henham, a general manager at Hastings and Rother mental health services, said lessons had been learned and changes have been made since Ms Brampton's death. She said the team no longer sends or receive faxes, after the GP said he had faxed the psychiatrist's letter to them. Ms Brampton had studied fashion at Central Saint Martin's College of Art & Design before starting at Vogue. She became fashion editor at The Observer and was then headhunted to launch women's lifestyle magazine Elle in the UK at the age of 30 in the 1980s. She later had a weekly agony aunt column in the Sunday Times Style magazine from 2006 until 2014. In 2008 she gave a personal account of her efforts to overcome depression in her book "Shoot the Damn Dog". The coroner described Ms Brampton as a "bright star" and began his conclusion with the writer's words: "We don't kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive."

We always think the moment someone is rich and have enough money to throw around, they are void of worries and life problem. I mean here is someone who was bold enough to ask for help yet no one reached out to help. I feel so bad knowing this. Depression is real and hit even the most unsuspecting people. It is so bad that she died without anyone showing her true love.


Shannen Doherty Shares Her Cancer Story With Chelsea Handler In Emotional, Tear-Filled Interview —  Shannen Doherty recalled what it’s like to be diagnosed with cancer in an emotional new interview with Chelsea Handler. During the sit-down, set to air on Handler’s Netflix show, Chelsea, the actress holds back tears while revealing what she’s learned through her health crisis. “I think what’s beautiful and hard and interesting about cancer is that it tears you down and builds you, and tears you down and builds you,” the Beverly Hills, 90210alum says in the clip. “It remakes you so many different times. The person I thought I was supposed to be or was going to be or who I thought I was six months ago is now somebody completely different. I realize, ‘Wow, I really thought that I was so brave and so gracious this entire time and really I was just hiding.’” Handler, whose mom died of breast cancer in 2006, got choked up during the emotional interview.  “Don’t cry! Don’t cry!” Doherty told the talk show host as Handler tried to hold back tears. “Well, I mean, all right — hold on a second,” Handler, 41, said, while tilting her head back to keep the tears from streaming down her face. “This was very hard and not humbling — because I’ve already been humbled by cancer,” Doherty then continues. “It was hard in the sense of rethinking sort of who you are and how you come to terms with who are now and accepting it and looking at your husband and thinking like, ‘Dude, I’m so sorry.’” The actress, 45, was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2015 and had a single mastectomy this past May. In August, she revealed that the cancer had spread and she was going to undergo chemotherapy followed by radiation. Last week, she shared an emotional flashback Friday photo from one day after undergoing chemo.  “Hope is possible. Possibility is possible. To my cancer family and everyone suffering.... stay courageous. Stay strong. Stay positive. #wegotthis,” she captioned the snap of herself curled up in a hospital bed. “#fightlikeagirl.”

Cancer s really not a good way to die. I am yet to get my head around the cause. It is always painful when people doe as a result. The last moment are always tearful for me and I usually find it very hard to stand it. I wish more research can be done to combat it...since no one really know the cause.


Cancer is a very dangerous disease and I love the fact that the woman fought to the end. I however hope more attention will be on the causes so people can properly prevent it. It always have a sad ending and only few people are able to survive it. I still believe the cure is out there but pharmaceutical companies are deliberately hiding it.


Suicide deaths on the rise in kids —  Since 2007, the rate of suicide deaths among children between the ages of 10 and 14 has doubled, according to new government data released Thursday.   The death rate data, published in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, measured children's fatalities due to motor vehicle traffic injury, homicide and suicide between the years 1999 and 2014. On a positive note, the number of deaths due to motor vehicle traffic, or car crashes, has improved significantly through the years, the report says. In 2014, vehicle fatalities decreased by 58% from 1999, when there were 4.5 deaths per 100,000 children, to 1.2 deaths in 2014. Deaths from homicide have also declined over the same time period, though less dramatically, decreasing from 1.2 fatalities in 1999 to 0.8 in 2014. Conversely, the suicide death rates fluctuated from 1999 to 2007 but rose sharply after 2007. The lowest rate of suicide fatalities was 0.9 deaths per 100,000 kids in 2007, but that number doubled to 2.1, or 425 deaths, in 2014. Dr. Lisa Boesky, a private clinical psychologist and author who studies adolescent suicide, says younger kids will often take their own lives impulsively. Young kids may attempt to harm themselves for different reasons than teens. Most of the time, bad relationships between family and friends provoke kids to hurt themselves, Boesky says. On the other hand, a 14-year-old may kill herself because of a fight with her boyfriend. When looking for the warning signs for suicide in kids, "many people look for signs of depression," Boesky explained. "Teens (who attempt suicide) typically show mood swings and depression, but younger children are much more likely to suffer from (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). "Many people, including medical professionals, think suicide is a teenage problem," Boesky said. "But suicide can happen at very young ages, and we have to talk about this problem with all children." Though it can be more difficult to predict suicide in children, Boesky notes several warning signs. Any increased sadness, irritability or anger should be monitored. Guardians should also pay attention to children who suddenly lose interest in their friends or activities, or begin to isolate themselves more. Finally, adults should tune in to what kids are saying. Take heed if they start saying mean or derogatory things or if they say things like, "I wish I were dead" or "I wish I could go to sleep forever." "These sayings are not normal," Boesky emphasized. For parents, if children start displaying these behaviors, Boesky advises talking to the kids about their feelings and questioning why they feel that way. If the actions worsen, parents may want to contact a pediatrician or counselor. She added, "Although it is important to talk to your children, it is even more important to listen." There is very little research regarding suicide in children in the 10 to 14 age group and younger, according to Boesky. She hopes that the CDC's report will highlight the problem of suicide rates increasing in kids and that both medical professionals and parents will be better prepared to prevent harm before it happens. "This is a wakeup call for more research on why young children are taking their lives and how we can intervene," Boesky said.

one would think the increased technological advancement would make people happier and less prone to suicide. It is sad that rather than curbing it, it has escalated it too much. Kids now getting depressed. I wonder why kids of nowadays are softer though. I mean, one would expect stronger kids and more emotional stability since we have everything easy


Humans are the most selfish and wicked of all creation. They treat the planet as they like and handle the animals with carelessness, forgetting that they have their own families and emotions. It is so sad that we take these animals away from their natural habitats and treat them unfairly. Mother nature treats them better than we do.


really? world worst zoo? Should we even have anything like that? It is a very pitiable state we've found our self in. Humans keep destroying everything Mother nature has bestowed us with. We pick up animals form their natural habitats, deprive them of social and emotional bondings with their kind and the best we can offer is deplorable habit.


At least 239 migrants believed drowned in Mediterranean, U.N. says —  BRUSSELS — At least 239 migrants are believed to have drowned this week in two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya, the United Nations refugee agency said Thursday, adding to the toll in what was already the deadliest year on record in the Mediterranean Sea. Survivor accounts suggest that two crowded boats broke up just off the Libyan coast Wednesday, said Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The 31 survivors were taken Thursday to the Italian island of Lampedusa, which has become a rescue hub amid an ever-deadlier crisis as migrants depart Africa’s northern shores trying to reach Europe. The reports from the survivors could not be independently confirmed, but it is common for migrant ships to be filled far beyond capacity, and hundreds have perished in past sinkings. If true, the latest shipwrecks bring the toll of dead and missing in the Mediterranean to 4,220 this year, the highest on record, Sami said. “This is an absolutely appalling figure,” she said.  According to Sami, the 29 survivors of the first wreck said they capsized after wooden planks at the bottom of the rubber dinghy broke apart several hours after departing Libya around 3 a.m. Wednesday. Pregnant women and at least six children were on board, survivors told the UNHCR, but no children were saved in the rescue, which took place about 25 miles off Libya’s coast. One woman lost her 2-month-old baby, Sami said, and 12 bodies were recovered. The survivors said they were in the cold waters for hours before being rescued about 3 p.m. Wednesday. They said more than 140 people were aboard the boat. Two survivors of a second shipwreck were rescued in a separate operation, Sami said. They said at least 120 had been on board their boat, which had problems immediately upon setting out and broke apart off the Libyan coast around 5 a.m. Wednesday. The remaining passengers are believed to have drowned, Sami said. No further rescue operations are being performed at the location of those shipwrecks. “I am deeply saddened by another tragedy on the high seas. . . . So many lives could be saved through more resettlement and legal pathways to protection,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement Thursday. “The Mediterranean is a deadly stretch of sea for refugees and migrants, yet they still see no other option but to risk their lives to cross it.” Most of the migrants appear to have come from sub-Saharan Africa, Sami said, but she said details were still being checked. She did not immediately know which agency carried out the rescue. The European Union is conducting a search-and-rescue operation in the western Mediterranean that is temporarily being offered logistical help from the NATO military alliance. “In this, the deadliest year for boat migration to Europe, the E.U. remains focused on deterrence over protection,” Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Thursday. “The E.U. should be pressing Libyan authorities for permission to operate in Libyan waters, so they can help those in distress and bring them safely to Europe.” Rescued migrants have told the UNHCR that smugglers along the route were telling migrants that responsibility for rescues would soon shift to Libya, and that any rescued refugees would be returned to Libya rather than carried onward to Italy, the agency said. That could be a cause of the current spike. Migrant traffic across the Mediterranean has changed significantly in the past year, after more than 1 million people made the passage in 2015. Most of them came via Turkey to Greece and then pressed onward into Europe. The sea portion of that journey was shorter and safer than the perilous passage from Libya to Italy. But the Turkish government largely shut down the migrant flow in the spring, closing off the main pathway for people fleeing the conflicts in Syria and Iraq into Europe. This week, the Gambian soccer federation announced that one of its stars had died at sea while trying to reach Europe. Fatim Jawara, 19, the goalkeeper on the country’s women’s national team, drowned when her boat went down off the coast of Libya several weeks ago. Traffic from Libya and northern Africa has increased and grown deadlier, according to U.N. figures. Last year, 153,846 people arrived in Italy via the central Mediterranean route — a figure that has just been surpassed in 2016. The arrivals in Italy last month were more than triple those of a year earlier. The shifting migration patterns have been a boon to smugglers, as demand has increased across the trickier North African route. Smugglers are sending out large groups in several ships at once, complicating rescue efforts if multiple boats capsize, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said in October. It was not immediately clear whether Wednesday’s sinkings were connected to a single smuggling operation. Kevin Sieff in Kigali, Rwanda, contributed to this report.

Humans killing themselves in avoidable situations. Why cabt they just sit in their countries? I cant blame them though, the global unrest is alarming and people are just trying to survive. But travelling over the sea using such boats is pushing it too far. I feel sad and sorry for them and wish I can help their situation