Americans feel guilty about wasting too much food, but still do it —  Americans eat a lot, also throw a lot of food. That is the main point worth underlining in the new study published at Plos One, a peer-reviewed journal. Surprisingly, it is just one of the two large-scale papers about food waste.   In 2010, the study says that about one-hundred and thirty-three billion pounds of edible food both at the retail and consumer levels went uneaten. That’s about one-thousand two-hundred and forty-nine calories per person per day. Two-thirds of which were attributed to consumers, meaning people in homes that waste the food that they purchase.   In addition to the significant waste of resources, the paper says that this behavior of consumers has a substantial negative impact to the environment as about ninety-five percent of food waste enter the United States landfills.   In a press release, Ohio State University professor Brian Roe explains that the results provide the data required to develop targeted efforts to reduce waste of food each year. “If we can increase awareness of the problem, consumers are more likely to increase purposeful action to reduce food waste,” he said. “You don’t change your behavior if you don’t realize there’s a problem in the first place.”   The team of researchers has developed a national survey to identify the awareness and attitudes of Americans regarding food waste. Last year, it was administered to five-hundred people representative of the country’s population.   The study has found that about fifty-three percent of American respondents said that they’re aware that it is a problem; that’s about ten percent higher than the related research published by Johns Hopkins last year.   Doctoral student Danyi Qi, one of the authors of the research, says that they’ve found three things that people consider regarding food waste: First, about sixty-eight percent of respondents believe that throwing away edible food after the package date has passed is reducing the chance of food-linked diseases and illnesses. Meanwhile, about fifty-nine percent believe that some food waste is ‘necessary’ for freshness and flavorful certainty.   Second, seventy-seven percent said they feel a “general sense of guilt” when throwing food away. Also, about fifty-eight percent claimed to understand that throwing away of food is bad for the environment. Meanwhile, only forty-two percent said they believe wasted food is a “major source of wasted money.”   And third, which is perhaps the most interesting, is that fifty-one percent of respondents believe it would be difficult to reduce home food waste. Plus, about forty-two percent said they don’t have enough time to worry about it. For the economic perspective, fifty-three percent admit that they waste a lot of food but still buy more in bulk or in large quantities during store sales.   For the throwing-the-blame perspective, about eighty-seven percent believed that they waste less food than other similar households.   The research in full is available at the PLOS One website, and it is titled ‘Household Food Waste: Multivariate Regression and Principal Components Analyses of Awareness and Attitudes among U.S. Consumers.’

I think that it is shocking that people waste so much food yet think that everybody is wasting more food than them. I go to the grocery store and see how much stuff people have in their carts and how much money they spend so it's no shock to me that people waste so much food, there is no way they can eat it all. Maybe they are not aware that they are wasting so much food and how bad it is for the environment.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 35 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 32000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 4.0 in openness, 3.0 in conscientiousness, 1.5 in extraversion, 4.5 in agreeableness, and 2.0 in stability.

A Palm Oil Company Threatens The Third Largest Population Of Orangutan In Indonesia —  The Sungai Putri, meaning River of the Princess, is an exquisite natural forest located in West Kalimantan, providence of Indonesia. It is about 141,000 acres of forest land, has extensive peat areas of up to 14.5 meters deep at some points, and can provide a home to about 750 to 1750 orangutan. Because of these numbers, it is the third largest population of critically Endangered orangutan Species in the province. Due to the fact that the Indonesia government has committed to protecting peat, forests and orangutans, it is alarming that there is no protection to this forest.   The forest is at critical risk of being cut down by a company named PT Mohairson Pawan Khatulistiwa who have plans to clear more than half of their liscence area to covert into an industrial tree plantation. The company is also planning on building a drainage canal from the north to the south side of the area for which some work has already reportedly began.   The Indonesian government has stated its international and national commitments to reducing carbon emissions and deforestation, protecting and restoring peat swamp forests through the Peatland Restoration Agency established by the president and stabilizing all remaining wild orangutan populations. At the same time, they allowed the company to obtain a lisence permissing the destruction of this forest land, peat and the orangutans who live in that habitat.   A satellite image taken of the land in 2016 confirms that about 58 percent of the 48,440 lisence area still remains covered in tall tree peat swamp forest and the rest is covered in medium height swamp forest, heath forest and hill forest.   At the deepest part of the dome, the peat is 14.5 meters deep, with large areas deeper than 3 meters. Indonesian laws such as the Government Regulation no. 71 of 2014 do not allow peat development in areas with more than 3 meters peat.   Threatened orangutans living in the area also raises much concern. The most recent orangutan survey for the 57,000 Sungai Putri block estimated up to 1,750 orangutans. These orangutans will not survive in areas where all forest is cleared. If conversion plans go ahead, some 500 to 1,000 orangutans will likely die or will be in need of rescue. The Indonesian Orangutan Forum FORINA recently recognized this as the largest population of orangutan located in the region and if they lose their habitat they will have  no other place to go. Indonesia’s current national action plan for orangutans aims to stabilize all wild populations by 2017, and destroying the habitat of one of the largest remaining populations is incompatible with that.   A well known developer Norweigian professor who specializes in tropical forests says, “These developments seem to violate Indonesia’s own legal processes not to mention its international commitments. Claims about absence of forest, peat and endangered species – here and elsewhere – clearly need to be assessed and verified in a transparent manner. Those who dispute the conditions can provide their data”.   Improved management is desperately needed in Sungai Putri. There are lots of illegal logging happening in the area, as are fires. According to the Global Fire Watch data, in 2015 alone, there were about 250 fires that occurred on the margins of Sungai Putri. The risk of more fires would only increase if Sungai Putri was drained and deforested as planned.   There are opposing conflicts regarding the deforestation.  Some people welcome the development of the peatland area because of the potential employment opportunities it can bring as well as the possibility to get compensated by the company for their lost traditional land uses. Others see it differently. However, according to the latest science studies, the development of coastal peatlands will never be sustainable.   Instead of going through with this development, there are other solutions available that would allow Indonesia to fulfill its development and poverty alleviations objectives but they require careful planning and close collaboration efforts between the private sector, governments, non-governmental groups, and local communities. The time to initiate those collaborations and find sustainable solutions for Indonesia is now!

I find humanities lack of care for the environment disgusting. The fact the there are companies that profit off the destruction of forests and homes and animals is mind blowing. Entire acres of forest are being destroyed for the wood they hold. Inside those forests are animals that have homes and families. They are all being displaced, or worse killed, by these greedy businessmen looking to turn a profit off of nature. After reading this article it sounds like the government of Indonesia is not committed to protecting the forests or the animals living in them. It almost seems like they are making money off of the death of nature, and so they are turning a blind eye to the violation of its very own laws.


Man Is Shot in Charlotte as Unrest Stretches to Second Night —  A second night of protests set off by the police killing of a black man spiraled into chaos and violence after nightfall here Wednesday when a demonstration was interrupted by gunfire that gravely wounded a man in the crowd. Law enforcement authorities fired tear gas in a desperate bid to restore order. The city said on its Twitter account that the unidentified man was on life support after what officials said was a “civilian on civilian” confrontation. The authorities provided no further details. Charlotte officials had said earlier that the man had been killed in the unrest. The Police Department reported that four officers had injuries that were not life-threatening. Gov. Pat McCrory’s office said late Wednesday that he had declared an emergency and had “initiated efforts” to deploy the National Guard and the state Highway Patrol. The shooting heightened the tension among the demonstrators and the police alike. City officials were quick to say the police had not fired any live rounds, but riot police personnel did fire repeated rounds of tear gas. The scene of the shooting and the largest demonstration of the evening happened along a crowded street in Charlotte’s city center, where the sound of gunfire mixed with the noise of people banging objects into vehicles. The gunshot victim lay motionless on the ground, his eyes open, as people surrounded him and blood pooled among their feet. He was taken into the nearby Omni Hotel, and a series of confrontations played out afterward as the police kept people from entering. There was sporadic looting. Twitter messages showed that the team store of the Charlotte Hornets of the N.B.A. had been broken into and gutted of merchandise. “We are working very hard to bring peace and calm back to our city,” Mayor Jennifer Roberts said on CNN. A spokesman for Ms. Roberts said she had requested and planned to review on Thursday a police dashboard video of the encounter with Keith L. Scott, the black man who was shot and killed here on Tuesday. But she said she would not make the video public. Around 10 p.m., the police ordered all civilians, including members of the news media, to leave parts of the Uptown neighborhood and threatened to arrest those who did not comply. When the crowd did not respond immediately, the authorities fired more tear gas within minutes. After that, it appeared that the crowd started to disperse, although some stragglers remained in the area. The unrest in Charlotte came after two other police-involved deadly shootings in the last week. First came the shooting of a teenager in Columbus, Ohio, who had been brandishing a BB gun. Two days later, on Friday, was the shooting death in Tulsa, Okla., of a man who had his hands above his head before an officer opened fire. And then it was Charlotte, where Mr. Scott, 43, black like the other two, was shot by a police officer in a parking space marked “Visitor” outside an unremarkable apartment complex. On Wednesday that parking space was both a shooting site and a shrine, and Charlotte was a city on edge, the latest to play a role in what feels like a recurring, seemingly inescapable tape loop of American tragedy. “To see this happen multiple times — just time after time — it’s depressing, man,” said Tom Jackson, 25, who works with mentally disabled people. He didn’t know Mr. Scott but was drawn here nonetheless, one of many strangers and friends who came to pay their respects and make sense of their sorrow. In addition to the fatal attacks on police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas, it was another grim snapshot of America’s continuing crisis in black and blue, this moment amplified by presidential politics. And as usual, there was very little consensus on what went wrong and how to fix it. At a news conference on Wednesday, Kerr Putney, chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police, said officers had found the gun that the police said Mr. Scott had brandished before an officer, who is also black, fatally shot him and were examining police video of the encounter that unfolded as Mr. Scott stepped out of a car. Family members of Mr. Scott have said that he was unarmed and was holding only a book. Chief Putney said Wednesday morning, “We did not find a book.” The response of B. J. Murphy, an African-American activist here, could not have been more different: “Everybody in Charlotte should be on notice that black people, today, we’re tired of this,” he said, adding an epithet. “We’re tired of being killed and nobody saying nothing. We’re tired of our political leaders going along to get along; they’re so weak, they don’t have no sympathy for our grief. And we want justice.” All three shootings are under investigation, and are rife with questions. The police in Columbus said that the BB gun wielded by 13-year-old Tyre King was built to look nearly identical to a Smith & Wesson Military & Police semiautomatic pistol. Mayor Andrew J. Ginther blamed the shooting, in part, on Americans’ “easy access to guns, whether they are firearms or replicas.” In Tulsa, the police said investigators found the drug PCP in the shooting victim’s S.U.V. The drug is known to induce erratic behavior in some users. But Mr. Crump, who is representing the family of the victim, Terence Crutcher, said the discovery of the drug, if true, would not justify the deadly shooting. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Crutcher’s father, the Rev. Joey Crutcher, said his son had marched in protest of earlier police killings and had thought about how to protect himself during interactions with police officers. They had planned to go to a church event aimed at teaching people how behave around the police and avoid becoming another hashtag shared on social media by Black Lives Matter protesters. “I never thought this would happen to my family,” Mr. Crutcher said, adding that he had counseled his son all his life about how to behave around the police. “I said, ‘Whenever you’re stopped by a police and you’re in that situation, raise your hands up, always let them see your hands, let them see that you are not going for a gun.’ And that is what Terence was doing. I said, ‘Always put your hands on your car.’ I made that specific, ‘your car.’ And that’s what Terence was walking to do on his car so that they could see his hands.” John Barnett, a civil rights activist in Charlotte, said during a raucous news conference near the site of the shooting that Mr. Scott had been waiting for his son to arrive home from school. “The truth of the matter is, he didn’t point that gun,” Mr. Barnett said. “Did he intend to really sit in a vehicle, waiting on his son to get home from school and then plot to shoot a cop if they pulled up on him?” Adding to an atmosphere loaded with suspicion and mistrust, residents of the apartment complex gave varying accounts of Mr. Scott’s death. Some differed from the police on which officer fired the shots, and others said that no one had tried to administer CPR for Mr. Scott as officials had said. Brentley Vinson, the officer who the police say shot Mr. Scott, is black, as is the police chief. “Since black lives do not matter for this city, then our black dollars should not matter,” said Mr. Murphy, the activist. “We’re watching a modern-day lynching on social media, on television and it is affecting the psyche of black people.” Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Wednesday that the Justice Department “is aware of, and we are assessing, the incident that led to the death of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte.” Responding to another police shooting, the state’s attorney in Baltimore County, Md., Scott D. Shellenberger, announced Wednesday that no charges would be filed against any of the officers involved in the Aug. 1 shooting death of Korryn Gaines or the shooting of her 5-year-old son. In Charlotte, Rakeyia Scott, Mr. Scott’s wife, said on Wednesday the family was “devastated” by the shooting. She described her husband as “a loving husband, father, brother and friend” and called on protesters to remain peaceful. At a campaign rally in Orlando, Fla., Hillary Clinton spoke about the shootings here and in Tulsa. “There is still much we don’t know about what happened in both incidents, but we do know that we have two more names to add to a list of African-Americans killed by police officers in these encounters,’’ she said. “It’s unbearable, and it needs to become intolerable. We also saw the targeting of police officers in Philadelphia last week. And last night in Charlotte, 12 officers were injured in demonstrations following Keith Scott’s death. Every day police officers are serving with courage, honor and skill.” Her Republican rival, Donald J. Trump, reacted on Twitter. “Hopefully the violence & unrest in Charlotte will come to an immediate end,” he wrote. “To those injured, get well soon. We need unity & leadership.” Unity, thus far, has been in short supply. On Friday, Mr. Trump earned the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. But polls show that his support among African-Americans is negligible, even though he has singled them out in promising to solve the ills of poverty and violence that he has characterized as plaguing black neighborhoods. On Wednesday, Mr. Jackson, the man who came here to mourn, was not thinking about the current presidential candidates. The police, he said, “are out here killing people, and they don’t even know their backgrounds,” he said. “They could be killing the next president.”

I can't believe that this is what America has become. People are dying every day. They are dying at the hands of those who should be protecting us. They are dying at the hands of random strangers with a vendetta. At what point does all this stop and do civilians get to feel safe again? If guns aren't the problem then what is the problem? If the police aren't the problem then who is responsible for these deaths?


Paris attacks: A year of grief, anger and change —  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."   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." 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."

I can't even imagine that these people must have gone through. Imagine being at a concert, enjoying yourself, and then all of a sudden you are being shot at. You are watching your friends drop to the floor dead. The people hiding had to endure so much. Just sitting there waiting to be killed. I will never understand how a human can inflict that kind of suffering on another human. It is such a terrible and scary thing.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 35 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 148000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 2.5 in openness, 6.5 in conscientiousness, 1.0 in extraversion, 4.5 in agreeableness, and 4.0 in stability.

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.

This is a very heartbreaking article. It's hard to read what is happening to people in other parts of the world. I can't believe people would leave their parents and elderly family members behind in a war. It's unimaginable. And to make matters worse, there is hardly any food for them in their homes. They're under constant attack and can't even get basic medications that we take for granted every day here in the US. I truly hope the wars stop and these people can get some assistance rebuilding their lives and homes. More effort needs to go into donating to the charities that help in these areas. I can understand why some would not want to travel and live there, considering there is a high probability of death from an airstrike but the people should at least have basic food items, clothing


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.

It's crazy how you can lose your life so easily! Imagine how that poor kid will feel when she wakes up from the hospital and realizes her whole family is gone. Can't even imagine. Makes me sick thinking about it. I sincerely hope she has other close relatives who can be there for her because she will need all the support she can get.


The person is male. Racially, the person is black / african american. The person is 30 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 55000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 6.0 in openness, 5.5 in conscientiousness, 6.0 in extraversion, 5.5 in agreeableness, and 5.5 in stability.

'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.

The article brought up many good points about how Americans see refugees and asylum seekers, as well as the internal conflict we battle when we imagine them taking shelter here. Most Americans are empathetic when we hear stories or see images however when the moment for us to do anything come along we don't find the nerve to act. The mock home evacuation was very interesting however it cannot fully convey the actual feeling people feel when their lives are ripped from them. It will take something different to move people to the point where they realize these people are legitimately fighting for their lives.


TRAGEDY: Tampa man lost wife, 2 children, in horrific crash that killed 5 —  TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The heartache of losing a loved one in a sudden, unexpected moment is devastating.   The shock is jarring and confusing. Families and friends are left with broken hearts and aching spirits. Losing one person is painful. But, for a Tampa husband, the grief is paralyzing and unbearable.   On Wednesday night, John Bernal lost his wife, his youngest daughter and his youngest son in a horrific car accident on MLK.   Mother Marianela Murillo and her two youngest children, John Bernal, Jr.  and Isabell Bernal, along with her teenager, Lina Bernal, were returning home from church when they were hit head-on in a fiery crash.   Their minivan burst into flames with the family trapped inside. The teenage daughter and her cousin visiting from Colombia, Luisa Louisa, were the only ones to survive in that van.   A relative began sobbing as she recalled the events while speaking to WFLA at Tampa General Hospital.   “My biggest thing is, I hope they didn’t suffer,” Gisela Martinez cried. “The car did catch on fire, and there were children in that car.”   While eyewitnesses claim it was street racing, the Florida Highway Patrol says there’s no evidence to prove it.   However, troopers say that the young man who caused the accident, 22-year-old Pablo Cortes III, was traveling at a high rate of speed when he lost control of his Volkswagen Golf. Both he and his passenger, Jolie Bartolome, were killed.   Family members are heartbroken and their hearts go out to the husband who lost his wife and two children.   “He’s suffering right now. He’s in pieces. I don’t wish this upon anybody at all. I mean, he is really in pieces,” said Mizrah Medina, a cousin.

The man losing his wife and two children in the accident is very terrible and I feel for him dearly, as well as the ones who have lost their lives. It's very crazy how much danger we are in on the road and we do not realize it. In an instant many lives can be lost just because someone made a mistake or a bad choice and there is not ability to take it back. I wish there was a way we could make driving much safer as many lives are lost each day this way.


Family loses home and two pets in D.C. fire —  A fire displaced a family of five and killed two cats inside their Northwest Washington rowhouse, D.C. fire and emergency services officials said. Firefighters were called to the two-story home in the 5000 block of Illinois Avenue NW about 1 p.m., said Vito Maggiolo, a fire department spokesman. All the residents escaped without injury, but two family pets did not. The Red Cross was notified to help two adults and three children who cannot reenter the home due to fire damage, officials said. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

There was a fire at a house in NW Washington D.C. which isn't very far from where I live in Alexandria, VA. The fire caused the people to be evacuated living in the home and two of the family's cats were also killed in the fire. This is surprising because I thought cats are pretty good at escaping when things go bad.


The person is female. Racially, the person is white. The person is 25 years old. The person has a college or university degree. The person earns 60000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 5.0 in openness, 6.0 in conscientiousness, 2.0 in extraversion, 5.0 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.

That's so sad about the situation with the coal and all the wildlife it's misplacing. It was kind of crazy reading the story about having the elephant crash into those people's houses -- i can't imagine having a giant two ton creature come through my wall! I'm glad no one was hurt, but it still sounds pretty scary.


Animals Starving in Venezuela Zoos —  The country’s poor economy, triggered by a drop in the price of oil, has led people as well as zoo animals to go hungry. When a nation is plagued by hard times, people aren’t the only ones to suffer. About 50 animals at Venezuela’s Caricuao Zoo have starved in the last six months due to the rising cost of food, caused by the nation’s economic downturn. Rabbits, tapirs, porcupines, pigs, and birds are among the fallen at the country’s northern zoo. Some went without food for two weeks. The National Parks Institute (INPARQUES), which oversees the country’s zoos, blames the shortages on the nation's economic crash, caused by a plummet in the price of oil (Venezuela is a major oil producer). The country can’t afford to import food, medicine, and other necessities, and inflation has caused prices to skyrocket. “The story of the animals at Caricuao is a metaphor for Venezuelan suffering,” Marlene Sifontes, union leader for INPARQUES employees, tells Reuters. Caricuao Zoo staffers have been feeding carnivorous lions and tigers diets of mango and pumpkin. They are also giving an elephant tropical fruit instead of hay. Other big cats are reportedly being fed slaughteredThoroughbred horses from a nearby racetrack. Meanwhile, many Venezuelans go without food on a daily basis and wait in supermarket lines for hours. The nation’s starving economy has driven people to hunt dogs, cats, and pigeons for food. On Monday, visitors to a zoo in Caracas, the nation’s capital, reportedly stole a horse and butcheredit for meat. Care and Feeding “Long-term, feeding the incorrect diet for any animal can have significant long-lasting health effects,” says Meredith Whitney, a wildlife rescue program officer of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), an animal protection organization based in Washington, D.C. Short-term, Whitney adds, animals can be affected psychologically. She works on improving living standards for big cats, and once encountered a malnourished animal with neurological difficulties. Diarrhea, bone abnormalities, and organ function are also side effects of malnourishment. The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) outlines animals’ nutritional needs in its Animal Welfare Strategy. Lack of food can lead to mental decline, the group warns. Given Venezuela’s nationwide economic situation, says Gail A’Brunzo, IFAW wildlife rescue manager, “You can expect the animals to be impacted in some way.” Moving Animals Outside the capital, zoo administrators in the western state of Táchira have asked local businesses to donate fruit, vegetables, and meat to feed the animals. In May, three animals died at a zoo in the Paraguaná Peninsula, in northwestern Venezuela. Staff are now attempting to move 12 animals more than 420 miles (676 kilometers) south to a park in Mérida. “If these zoos continue to operate after these animals are transferred and get new animals, [the suffering] could arise again,” Whitney says. As of this writing, no international animal rights organizations have committed to relocating the remaining zoo animals. All animals in the country, bipedal or not, are suffering. And Venezuela isn’t the only place where animals have been hurt by a poor social climate. Global Threat In March, the World Post reported 200 animals dead at the Khan Younis Zoo in southern Gaza. Mohammad Oweida, owner of the zoo, says the Israeli-Palestinian conflict prevented staff from adequately feeding or caring for the animals. Oweida started to amateurishly mummify the animal carcasses and kept them on display, but the cadavers have since been removed. He also tried to sell an emaciated tiger, ostrich, and pelican to buy food for the zoo’s remaining animals. Four Paws, an animal protection agency based in the U.S., is raising fundsto go to Gaza to shut down the Khan Younis Zoo. Four Paws has been in direct communication with Oweida since February and is now working to finalize arrangements. "If owners can no longer properly care for these precious lives, the animals should be handed over and/or confiscated by the proper authorities and placed with an accredited organization or sanctuary that would best care for them," Four Paws writes in a statement. Animals at the Taiz Zoo in southwestern Yemen are also victims of a nationwide crisis. The raging civil war there prevents tourists from visiting, which stifles the zoo’s revenue. Without funds, animals went without food or medicine while zoo workers went without pay. As of February, at least 12 lions and six leopards have died there. Four Paws doesn't currently have plans to enter Yemen due to safety concerns for its staff. “It all comes down to organizational management,” A’Brunzo says. “If the zoo is in imminent financial crisis, they need to take steps to provide for these animals. Ailing zoos should reach out to partner zoos or organizations that might be able to help, she adds. “This does not appear to be a short-term thing.”

Honestly the entire story is just so sad and really highlights how devastating the effects of greed are. It's not enough that our policies and hunger for power wreck human lives, we have to wreck entire environments and species, too. I feel so bad for the animals, and it just goes to show how much worse things must be for the actual humans.


I just read about this family that got killed in a car wreck and it was just horrible. It's one thing when part of your family dies, but apparently the husband had already died a few months previous and now the mom and two of the kids are dead, too, and that just leaves one kid who I guess was about five or six. She's all alone now. :(


Rescuers say all 33 miners trapped in China mine found dead —  BEIJING — All 33 coal miners trapped underground in a gas explosion earlier this week have been found dead, state media reported Wednesday, as work safety officials vowed to punish those responsible. Two miners survived Monday’s explosion but rescuers working around the clock found no others alive. All bodies have been recovered and rescuers were shown bowing their heads in memorial for the dead. Gas explosions inside mines are often caused when a flame or electrical spark ignites gas leaking from the coal seam. Ventilation systems are supposed to prevent gas from becoming trapped. The State Administration of Work Safety ordered an investigation into the blast, “adding that those responsible must be strictly punished.” Local officials in Chongqing also ordered smaller mines to shut down temporarily, Xinhua said. China’s mining industry has long been among the world’s deadliest. The head of the State Administration of Work Safety said earlier this year that struggling coal mines might be likely to overlook maintenance. China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal but plans to shutter more than 1,000 outdated mines as part of a broader plan to reduce overproduction.

Ugh, this story is so depressing. Cave ins and things like this are always devastating, but even more so when you dig and dig and find nothing. It reminds me of the dogs in 9/11 who got depressed over not finding survivors, or the Mexico earthquake where they made up a survivor just to make people feel better. It's so, so sad. :(


Flamingo Dead After Busch Gardens Visitor Allegedly Threw Her To The Ground —  A beloved flamingo at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, had to be euthanized Tuesday after police say a park visitor attacked her. Pinky, a female Chilean flamingo known for a distinctive style of walking that became known as the “Flamingo Flamenco,” was 19 years old, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Joseph Anthony Corrao was at the park with his family around 6:45 p.m. Tuesday when he allegedly reached into Pinky’s pen, grabbed her and threw her to the ground. The zoo had to euthanize her because of her injuries, according to a Busch Gardens statement.  “Pinky was a beloved member of the Busch Gardens Tampa Bay family and made many appearances on behalf of the park’s conservation and education efforts,” the statement read. “She will be sorely missed.” Witnesses said that before picking up Pinky, Corrao picked up a different flamingo but put it down unharmed, according to local news station WFLA. Zoo personnel say they never trained Pinky to perform her circular dance, but that she just started doing it on her own. “While making an appearance with Jack Hanna, the team noticed that she was dancing on her own to get attention,” Busch Gardens spokeswoman Karen Varga-Sinka told the Orlando Sentinel. “Since then, she has danced for countless guests, school groups, media appearances and national television shows.” Corrao was charged with animal cruelty and jailed on $2,000 bond. At his first court appearance on Wednesday, Judge John Conrad said that the act “borders on depraved,” ABC Action News reports. “I don’t know if you have other issues, but I don’t know who does that,” Conrad said.

I can't understand why someone would want to attack an animal like that that wasn't harming anyone and was just minding its own business. Like, how insensitive do you have to be to just kill something for fun? I was also surprised the flamingo was sol old; I had no idea they could live to be nineteen.


Video Shows Cop Punching Woman In The Face, But She’s The One Arrested For ‘Assault’ —  A uniformed Arizona police officer who was filmed punching a woman has been placed on administrative leave while the incident is investigated.   “Our agency is very concerned by what is depicted in this video,” police in Flagstaff, Arizona, said in a Wednesday evening press release.   The footage, shot and posted to Facebook on Wednesday, shows a woman struggling with two officers who apparently believe there is an outstanding warrant for her arrest. She can be heard on video saying the issue has already been resolved.   “You cannot arrest me until I know I have a warrant,” she tells the officers as she struggles with them.   Suddenly, one of them strikes her in the face with a closed fist.   Authorities have identified that officer as Jeff Bonar. They haven’t released the name of the woman, but she identifies herself in the video as Marissa Morris. “You just fucking punched me in the face,” Morris can be heard yelling after Bonar hits her.   A number of people appear to be watching the scene from a porch. The man who filmed the confrontation — identified by The Arizona Republic as Danny Paredes — can be also heard shouting, “Hey, you can’t hit a girl like that.”   Bonar cuffs Morris and the two other officers lead her away and place her in the back of a patrol car while a man ― presumably Paredes ― can be heard saying, “I got it on video, Marissa.”   Morris’ boyfriend, Jimmy Sedillo, told The Arizona Republic he and his children, ages 3 and 9, witnessed the incident.   “She had a warrant a few weeks ago,” Sedillo said. “He still assumed she had a warrant.” Sedillo told Phoenix’s KTVK his girlfriend was ultimately charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.Morris, who reportedly remains behind bars, could not be reached for comment.   “An internal affairs investigation is being initiated,” Flagstaff police said. “Further details will be released as the investigation progresses.”

This is why it's so important to always get things on tap, because if it hadn't been I guarantee the officers would have tried to have said that they didn't do anything and it was all just her resisting arrest. I don't understand why they didn't just look the warrant up to see if it was still active instead of harassing her like that.


Death of former Putin aide at D.C. hotel is ruled accidental —  A onetime aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose body was found last year in a D.C. hotel room died of head injuries suffered in accidental falls after days of “excessive” drinking, authorities in Washington said Friday as they closed the death investigation. Mikhail Y. Lesin, 57, a former Russian advertising executive who helped create the Kremlin’s global English-language Russia Today television network, was found dead Nov. 5 in the upscale Dupont Circle Hotel, and for much of a year, the manner of death was ruled “undetermined.” [Former Putin aide found dead in D.C. hotel] The manner has been amended to an accident with “acute ethanol intoxication” as a contributing cause, the office of U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips said Friday. Lesin was alone in his hotel room at the time of the falls, the statement said. The new ruling was made by the office of the D.C. chief medical examiner. Shortly after Lesin’s body was found, his family said he died as the result of a heart attack. More than four months later, the chief medical examiner’s office and D.C. police set off worldwide speculation when they said Lesin had suffered blunt-force injuries to his head and elsewhere on his body, although not explicitly declaring his death a criminal act. [Death investigation remains mystery] The statement Friday said that the investigation determined from video footage, interviews and other evidence that Lesin entered his room for the final time about 10:45 a.m. Nov. 4 after days of excessive alcohol consumption and was found dead the next morning. He “sustained the injuries that resulted in his death while alone in his hotel room,” the statement said. [Former aide died of blunt force trauma, medical examiner says] Lesin died of blunt-force injuries to his head, the statement said, and also suffered injuries to his neck, torso, arms and legs caused by falls. In describing the investigation, the statement referred to “new evidence” developed in the nearly year-long investigation. Asked about that reference, Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said, “We typically do not comment on specifics of our investigation and have no further comment on this particular matter.” On Friday, interim D.C. police chief Peter Newsham said, “I am comfortable with the ruling being an accidental death.” The investigation of Lesin’s death was conducted by D.C. police and the U.S. attorney’s office with assistance from the FBI, the statement said. Lesin, who made his fortune in the advertising business in the 1990s, was an architect of the Kremlin-dominated media landscape under Putin. As minister of the press during Putin’s first term as president from 2000 to 2004, Lesin orchestrated the takeover of the independent television network NTV and oversaw government propaganda and censorship laws during the war in Chechnya. In 2005, he helped launch Russia Today, now RT, a government-funded channel that broadcasts news with a pro-Moscow slant around the world. Known for his volatile temper, Lesin was reported to have antagonized powerful media interests, and an investigation by the anti-Putin whistleblower Alexei Navalny in 2014 revealed that Lesin owned real estate in the United States worth millions of dollars. He resigned later that year as head of Gazprom-Media, a holding company that owns several prominent pro-Kremlin TV networks, and kept a low profile until his death. Two days before his body was found, Lesin failed to appear as expected at a $10,000-a-table fundraiser in Washington organized by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, whose honorees included a philanthropist and chief executive of the largest private bank in Russia. Kremlin critics earlier this year theorized that Lesin may have been killed because officials feared that he was about to cut a deal with federal authorities investigating his land dealings in California. However, a longtime friend and business associate of Lesin’s, Sergey Vasiliev, said in March that he believed that Lesin died after a bout of heavy drinking, an account he said he formed after speaking to the Russian Foreign Ministry and others familiar with the sequence of events. Andrew Roth and Peter Hermann contributed to this report.

lol, yeah, definitely an accidental death when the guy shows up with blows all over his body, makes perfect sense. I'm not surprised, though ‚Äî anything involving Russia is going to have some kind of cover up at play. It's hard to say who did it, though ‚Äî his own government or someone outside of it. It's a messed up situation.


All polar bears across the Arctic face shorter sea ice season —  It's no secret that Arctic sea ice is melting.                                                                                Polar bears, the poster-child for climate change, are among the animals most affected by the seasonal and year-to-year changes in Arctic sea ice, because they rely on this surface for essential activities such as hunting, traveling and breeding. A new University of Washington study, with funding and satellite data from NASA and other agencies, finds a trend toward earlier sea ice melt in the spring and later ice growth in the fall across all 19 polar bear populations, which can negatively impact the feeding and breeding capabilities of the bears. The paper, to appear Sept. 14 in The Cryosphere, is the first to quantify the sea ice changes in each polar bear subpopulation across the entire Arctic region using metrics that are specifically relevant to polar bear biology. "This study shows declining sea ice for all subpopulations of polar bears," said co-author Harry Stern, a researcher with the UW's Polar Science Center. "We have used the same metric across all of the polar bear subpopulations in the Arctic so we can compare and contrast, for example, the Hudson Bay region with the Baffin Bay region using the same metric." The analysis shows that the critical timing of the sea ice break-up and sea ice freeze-up is changing in all areas in a direction that is harmful for polar bears. Nineteen separate polar bear populations live throughout the Arctic, spending their winters and springs roaming on sea ice and hunting. The bears have evolved mainly to eat seals, which provide necessary fats and nutrients in the harsh Arctic environment. Polar bears can't outswim their prey, so instead they perch on the ice as a platform and ambush seals at breathing holes or break through the ice to access their dens. "Sea ice really is their platform for life," said co-author Kristin Laidre, a researcher at the UW's Polar Science Center. "They are capable of existing on land for part of the year, but the sea ice is where they obtain their main prey." The new study draws upon 35 years of satellite data showing sea ice concentration each day in the Arctic. NASA scientists process the data, stored at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. The center also reports each fall the yearly minimum low for Arctic sea ice. This August saw the fourth lowest in the satellite record. Across all 19 polar bear populations, the researchers found that the total number of ice-covered days declined at the rate of seven to 19 days per decade between 1979 and 2014. Sea ice concentration during the summer months -- an important measure because summertime is when some subpopulations are forced to fast on land -- also declined in all regions, by 1 percent to 9 percent per decade. The most striking result, researchers said, is the consistent trend across all polar bear regions for an earlier spring ice melt and a later fall freeze-up. Arctic sea ice retreats in the springtime as daylight reappears and temperatures warm. In the fall months the ice sheets build again as temperatures drop. "These spring and fall transitions bound the period when there is good ice habitat available for bears to feed," Laidre said. "Those periods are also tied to the breeding season when bears find mates, and when females come out of their maternity dens with very small cubs and haven't eaten for months." The researchers found that on average, spring melting was three to nine days earlier per decade, and fall freeze-up was three to nine days later per decade. That corresponds to a roughly 3 ½ week shift at either end -- and seven weeks of total loss of good sea ice habitat for polar bears -- over the 35 years of Arctic sea ice data. "We expect that if the trends continue, compared with today, polar bears will experience another six to seven weeks of ice-free periods by mid-century," Stern said. The trend appears to be linear and isn't accelerating or leveling off, Stern added. The researchers recommend that the National Climate Assessment incorporate the timing of spring ice retreat and fall ice advance as measures of climate change in future reports. The study's results currently are used by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's polar bear specialist group, which completes assessments of polar bears and issues the species' conservation status. The researchers plan to update their findings each year as new ice coverage data are available. "It's nice to see this work being used in high-level conservation goals," Laidre said

I get so frustrated when I read articles like this, because I know so many people who just plug their ears and act like nothing is happening and everything is fine, when it's clearly not. We're destroying entire species if not the planet with our willful ignorance if not straight out denial, and I'm afraid it's going to be too late to do anything.


I can't imagine losing a pet like that. It's one thing when it's to an accident or disease or something, but to know they died in a fire and you couldn't get them out... I'd feel so guilty. Plus you'd have lost your home and all your possessions, and your best little friend is gone now too. I'm so glad I've never lost a pet.


Saudi women file petition to end male guardianship system —  A petition signed by more than 14,000 Saudi women calling for an end to the country's male guardianship system is being handed to the government. Women must have the consent of a male guardian to travel abroad, and often need permission to work or study. Support for the first large-scale campaign on the issue grew online in response to a trending Twitter hashtag. Activist Aziza Al-Yousef told the BBC she felt "very proud" of the campaign, but now needed a response. In the deeply conservative Islamic kingdom, a woman must have permission from her father, brother or other male relative - in the case of a widow, sometimes her son - to obtain a passport, marry or leave the country. Many workplaces and universities also demand a guardian's consent for female employees and students, although it is not legally required.   Renting a flat, undergoing hospital treatment or filing a legal claim often also require a male guardian's permission, and there is very little recourse for women whose guardians abuse them or severely limit their freedom. How much do you know about life as a woman in Saudi Arabia? WATCH: Are Saudi women really that oppressed? The 'Rosa Parks' of Saudi Arabia 'Flabbergasted' In July, an Arabic Twitter hashtag which translates as "Saudi women want to abolish the guardianship system" went viral after a Human Rights Watch reportwas published on the issue. Saudi women tweeted comments, videos and artwork calling for change. Bracelets saying "I Am My Own Guardian" appeared. The women counted on the petition all gave their full names, though more signed anonymously. Hundreds of women - one estimate suggests as many as 2,500 - bombarded the Saudi King's office over the weekend with telegrams containing personal messages backing the campaign. Human Rights Watch researcher Kristine Beckerle, who worked on the report, described the response as "incredible and unprecedented". "I was flabbergasted - not only by the scale, but the creativity with which they've been doing it," she said. "They've made undeniably clear they won't stand to be treated as second-class citizens any longer, and it's high time their government listened."    However, there has been opposition from some Saudi women, with an alternative Arabic hashtag, which translates as #TheGuardianshipIsForHerNotAgainstHer, gaining some traction, and opinion articles, like this one on the Gulf News website, arguing that the system should be reformed and applied better. Ms Yousef, who was stopped by police in 2013 for breaking the country's ban on women driving, said she did not expect any negative consequences from the petition: "I'm not worried, I'm not doing anything wrong," she said. She and another activist took the petition to the Royal Court in person on Monday, but were advised to send it by mail. She said a key demand is that an age between 18 and 21 be designated, above which a woman be "treated like an adult". "In every aspect, the important issue is to treat a woman as a full citizen," she said. She and other activists first raised the issue five years ago. "We never had a problem with campaigning, but the problem is there is no answer. But we always hope - without hope, you cannot work," she said. There has been no official response to the petition yet.

I am fully in support of this movement, and am glad it's finally getting some traction. I know that even just a few years ago, women finally got the right to drive in Saudi Arabia (before that, only men could). Liberating anyone is good for everyone, and women in Saudi Arabia have had their rights denied from them for far too long.


After Traveling More Than 700 Miles, A Young Wolf Was Gunned Down By A Government Sniper —  A young male wolf who was in search of a mate and had travelled more than 700 miles, has been gunned down by a government sniper.   This wolf was a member of the Huckleberry pack which is a family that lives in Washington state and had been saved from extermination by the Center for Biological Diversity as well as it’s allies when the wolf was a pup back in 2014.   The wolf was collared in February and began his journey east, surviving the wolf-killing fields in Idaho.   On Septemer 29th, he was gunned down at Judith Gap, Montana near Wildlife Services which is the deadly federal killing program that had wiped out more than 3 million wild animals just last year.   This was a special collared wolf whose journey was well documented and whose life was carelessly taken away at the hands of trigger-happy exterminators who must be held accountable for their actions.   Wolves often leave their pack in search of a mate and new territory when they come of age. Sadly, in states such as Colorado, Iowa, Wyoming and Utah these wandering wolves end up dying brutal deaths due to acts of cruelty and indifference.   For this reason, the Center for Biological Diversity has lawyers, scientists and activists who are in court, congress and on the streets every day fighting for the lives and safety of wolves.

I think it's pretty sad that the wolf got killed. I know that they're thinking about reintroducing wolves to a lot of areas because we've killed off so many of them, deer populations are spiking and because of that ticks and lyme disease are on the rise. They're saying it might become an epidemic. Anyway, I guess my point is that some people might say that we don't need to care about wolves because they're harmful or dangerous, but it turns out that we need them. Anyway. It's sad that the wolf died, and kinda crazy that he went out via sniper.


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.

I can't imagine being a fourteen year old kid and losing my eyesight; that's just so sad. I don't think it's right to fire at people who can't defend themselves, and the fact that it sounds like they're using pellet guns with new shapes just to cause more damage is awful. I hope that girl gets more help in the future.


US-Backed Air Campaign Accused Of War Crimes In Yemen —  On an August morning, a taxi driver in northwestern Yemen hugged his kids and jokingly told his family, "Forgive me if I don't come back." It was his way of laughing off the danger of driving in a country where airstrikes can hit any road at any time.   In the afternoon, Mohammed al-Khal happened upon just such a strike. Three missiles had hit a highway, leaving bystanders wounded. Al-Khal took one of them, an ice cream vendor, in his car and rushed him to the nearest hospital, run by the international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders.   But the warplanes were still hunting.   Moments after al-Khal pulled up at the hospital in the town of Abs, a missile smashed down by his car, just outside the hospital entrance. Al-Khal, a father of eight, was incinerated. The blast ripped through patients and family waiting in an outdoor reception area. Nineteen people were killed, along with two civilians killed on the highway.   The Aug. 15 attack typified what has been a pattern in the nearly 2-year-old air campaign by Saudi Arabia and its allies against Yemen's Shiite rebels, known as Houthis. Rights groups and U.N. officials say the U.S.-backed coalition has often either deliberately or recklessly depended on faulty intelligence, failed to distinguish between civilian and military targets and disregarded the likelihood of civilian casualties.   Experts say some of the strikes amount to war crimes.   "The Saudis have been committing war crimes in Yemen," said Gabor Rona, a professor teaching the laws of war at Columbia University. He warned that American personnel helping the coalition "may also be guilty of war crimes."   Nearly 4,000 civilians have been killed in the war, and an estimated 60 percent of them died in airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition, the U.N. says.   Saudi Arabia launched the coalition campaign in March 2015 in a bid to restore the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, after the Houthis overran the capital, Sanaa, and the north of the country. The Iranian-backed Houthis are allied with troops loyal to Hadi's ousted predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh.   The war has devastated the country of 26 million, causing widespread hunger and driving 3 million from their homes.   Warplanes have hit medical centers, schools, factories, infrastructure and roads, markets, weddings and residential compounds.   The U.S. and its allies have sold billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia for the campaign. The U.S. military provides it with intelligence, satellite imagery and logistical help.   Washington underlines it does not make targeting decisions and calls on the coalition to investigate reported violations. Over the summer, the U.S military reduced the number of military personnel advising the coalition from several dozen to fewer than five, an apparent move to distance itself from the campaign.   "U.S. security cooperation with Saudi Arabia is not a blank check," National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said.   The coalition says it does its utmost to avoid civilian casualties and notes rebels often operate among civilians. Rights groups and U.N. officials have reported probable war crimes by the Houthis, including shelling civilian areas and basing their fighters in schools and other civilian locations.     "This is the fog of war," the coalition's spokesman, Saudi Gen. Ahmed al-Asiri, told The Associated Press when asked if there is a pattern of civilian deaths. "In war, there are decisions that should be taken fast."   The coalition, which says it investigates every claim of violations, has made nine investigations public. In two it acknowledged mistakes and said it would pay compensation to victims. In most of the other cases, it said the strikes were against a justified military target.   But critics say the American and international backing has given Saudi Arabia and its allies a free rein.   "We believe that the coalition understood ... it has a green light to commit more massacres in Yemen," said Abdel-Rashed al-Faqeh, the head of Muwatana, one of Yemen's most prominent rights groups.   The strike in Abs underscored several of the problems experts point to in many strikes — the failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets and a lack of proportionality, the principle that use of force must be balanced to avoid civilian casualties.   In the strikes, warplanes initially fired a rocket targeting a Houthi checkpoint manned by two rebels on a highway outside Abs. The fighters escaped, but two more rockets were fired, killing two bystanders and wounding others. It appears the warplanes followed al-Khal's Camry, believing he was carrying a wounded fighter, and struck him outside the hospital.   The hospital was on a coalition list of sites not to be targeted in airstrikes, and had markings on its roof to show it was a medical facility.   The AP interviewed witnesses to the strikes on the highway and at the hospital, as well as al-Khal's two wives.   The head of Doctors Without Border's mission in Yemen, Colette Gadenne, said the coalition acknowledged to the group privately that the strike was a mistake.   The head of the coalition's investigation team, Mansour al-Mansour, said he could not discuss the investigation results in public. He said the coalition gave Doctors Without Borders all information it gathered.   The effect of the strike — the fifth on a facility run by the group in Yemen — has been wide-reaching. The organization pulled its personnel from northern Yemen, straining staff at multiple hospitals.   The Abs hospital served around 100,000 peoplpe, said its manager, Ibrahim Ali. Now it is shut down and the nearest medical facilities are two or three hours away by car. "Patients sometimes die on the road," Ali said.   Rona, the legal expert, said those behind the Abs strikes "didn't take sufficient precautions to determine that the people in the taxi are targetable." Then, warplanes struck where "there would be significant collateral damage to the hospital."   "Any way you look at it, it is a war crime."

It's amazing how statistics can show you how bad things are, but it's individual stories that really make you feel them. Like, reading about how 4,000 civilians have been killed in the crossfire? that's sad. But somehow reading about just one man, who ran an taxi service or a guy with an ice cream truck and leaving behind eight kids? Devastating.


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.

I've never been in a fire personally or really known about one, but I can't imagine how terrifying that would be. I kind of wonder how the people outside of the complex got hurt - I wonder if they were trying to get people out, or if some of the fire/debri came outside? Either way, it would be terrifying. I'm glad no one died.


China: Boy trapped in well found dead after 4 days —  A young boy stuck in a well in northern China since Sunday has been found dead, according to local media.   Rescue crews found the boy's body Thursday in a narrow, abandoned well in the province of Hebei, bringing an end to an almost five-day search involving more than 500 responders. He fell down the well -- just one foot (30 centimeters) wide -- while helping his father harvest vegetables, state news agency Xinhua reported. Too narrow for adults to climb into, rescuers began digging out the 40-meter deep well. Aerial shots of the scene showed excavators working on soft sandy soil around the dry well. Xinhua said the earth was prone to collapse and measures had been taken to support the shaft.

I can't imagine losing a kid this way. 'Cause like... he'd be literally right there, you know? You could hear him if he said anything, maybe even see him if the whole was straight enough. But there'd be no way to get to him. Just forty feet away and your kid is dying. Ugh. I feel so bad for his dad, I hope he doesn't blame himself.