The person is female. Racially, the person is asian / pacific islander. The person is 44 years old. The person has a postgraduate / professional degree. The person earns 70000 dollar per year. According to the Big Five personality test, on a scale of 10, the person has scored 7.0 in openness, 4.5 in conscientiousness, 1.5 in extraversion, 7.0 in agreeableness, and 1.5 in stability.

Horrific crash kills Yu Xu, 1st woman to fly China's J-10 fighter —  One of China's first female fighter pilots and a member of the country's air force aerobatics team was killed in a training accident over the weekend, according to Chinese state-run media.   Capt. Yu Xu, 30, died Saturday during a routine training flight with the aerobatics team, according to the reports. The Chinese military did not provide details of the accident in Hebei province, but state-run media, citing military sources and witnesses, said Yu ejected from her aircraft after it collided with another during the training. After the ejection, the wing of another plane hit Yu, killing her, according to a report from China Daily. Yu's male co-pilot ejected safely and survived, the report said. The other jet also landed safety. The flight data recorder, or black box, from Yu's jet was recovered as authorities investigate the accident, China Daily reported. Yu: 'I have become a real fighter pilot' Yu was the first of four women who are certified to fly the J-10, a single-engine multi-role jet that entered service in 2004 and is considered the first Chinese domestic fighter to rival Western fighters in its capabilities. Yu flew a J-10 fighter with China's August 1st Aerobatics Team. Her last performance was at Airshow China in Zhuhai earlier this month. J-10 fighters from China's August 1st aerobatics team perform at Airshow China in Zhuhai on November 4, 2016. The show was Capt. Yu Xu's last public performance. J-10 fighters from China's August 1st aerobatics team perform at Airshow China in Zhuhai on November 4, 2016. The show was Capt. Yu Xu's last public performance. "I think the acrobatics are quite difficult, with high requirements and standards made in all aspects. Our condition is quite satisfactory, but we need more trainings if we want to be better," Yu said of her performances in an interview with China's CCTV. Yu, 30, joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force in September 2005. She qualified as a fighter pilot in 2009 and qualified to fly the J-10 in 2012, when she soloed in the fighter. A Chinese Air Force J-10 fighter on display an Airshow China in Zhuhai November 2016. A Chinese Air Force J-10 fighter on display an Airshow China in Zhuhai November 2016. "I'm quite happy with myself, because this solo flight means that I have become a real fighter pilot," she told CCTV. Wan Ying, a friend of Yu's, told CNN that Yu was "a very positive, humble and nice person who loved taking care of friends." She was also an avid reader, Wan said.  Wan said she and Yu had talked only two days before the deadly crash about meeting up for dinner. Capt. Yu Xu described herself as "a real fighter pilot" after she qualified to fly the J-10. Capt. Yu Xu described herself as "a real fighter pilot" after she qualified to fly the J-10. Yu saluted as a hero Yu's death Saturday saw many in China questioning in online forums whether women should be fighter pilots and if they were getting the right training. "I only want to know the cause of the incident. What should be to blame for, problems with the plane or lack of training?" one poster wrote on the Chinese social website Weibo. But state-run Global Times quoted a Chinese aviation expert, Wang Ya'nan, as saying Yu and other women in the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force were trail blazers. "China is a pioneer in training female aerobatic pilots. When the program started, there was no foreign experience to borrow from or statistics to rely on from other countries. From this perspective, Yu Xu and other female aerobatic pilots have taken greater risks, which deserve more of our respect," Wang was quoted as saying. On Weibo, Yu was saluted as a hero. "Yu Xu is our most proud female pilot. Her death is a great loss for our country," wrote one poster. "Yu is the Hua Mulan (legendary woman warrior) of our era, a rare heroine," wrote another. The website for the All-China Women's Federation reported Monday that 60 million users of the Weibo site had clicked on Yu's story by Sunday night.

China's first female fighter pilot died in an aerobatics crash. I wonder if she would have ever seen any other flight than performing in shows. I've definitely got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand she's definitely a trailblazer for women in her country. On the other hand, for what purpose?


Investigators say tragedy should serve as warning after boy falls from apartment window —  Police in Willoughby Hills are investigating the tragic death of a 2-year-old boy, who fell from the 11th floor of an apartment building early Wednesday morning. Investigators said the window of the child's bedroom was open and he was able to push open the screen. Officers and paramedics rushed to the Willoughby Hills Towers apartment complex on Chardon Road after a security guard reported a small child fell out of the window and onto the parking deck below. "There were two residents on the back of the building. I came to the back of the building, and they said they just came outside and the child was laying right there," the 911 caller told dispatch. Detectives said 2-year-old Anthony Suttles Jr. was rushed to the hospital, but pronounced dead a short time later. They said the child's mother put him and a sibling to bed about an hour before he pushed the screen out and fell from the window, which had been left open. Police said the mother and father were in the living room, unaware he had fallen. "Thus far, our investigation has shown this was a pure accident. You know we have not received any type of information that tells us otherwise," Det. Ron Parmertor said. Investigators said the tragedy should serve as a warning to other parents about the dangers of open and unlocked windows in high-rise apartments. "Just know that 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, you know, they're climbers. Just think about when your kids are in their cribs," he said. "How many children climb out of their cribs? You know, that's one of the first instincts that they learn how to do."

Why do high rises not have a limit on the amount a window can be opened? I understand if you don't have air conditioning it might need to be wide, but why can't we have limits so that a small body can't fall out? It's a terrible thing, and one I'm sure the parents never even considered. Alternative to that I suppose you'd have to not have anything at all a child could climb up to the window on. It's just too sad though, because you would need to not even have a stool - at two, a kid could certainly move one of those.


The person is male. Racially, the person is asian / pacific islander. The person is 29 years old. The person has a high school degree or diploma. The person earns 44000 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, 4.5 in extraversion, 6.0 in agreeableness, and 5.0 in stability.

Dear friend,I am writing to tell you about a horrific story and article that I have just read. A small two year old boy fell out of his bedroom window and died while his parents thought he was asleep in his room. The window was open and he pushed the screen out and fell and died shortly after. It is such a horrible story.


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

Dear friend,                                                                       I have recently finished reading an article about airstrikes that killed over 40 people and injured many more in Cairo. It is very heartbreaking to hear this news. I feel so bad for the people of the middle east who have to live every day of the their lives scared of missiles and bombs and gunfire.


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.”

Dear friend,                                          I have recently just read an article about a horrible shooting in Charlotte. It was a black man who was killed by the police. This is just one of many such cases unfortunately. I think there is a problem in this country and I hope that it can be solved one day.


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."

Dear friend,                                        I have just read a horrifying and disturbing article about a terror attack that happened in Paris, france in 2015. There were 90 people killed at a rock concert after terrorists opened fire and set of bombs inside of the music venue. This was a truly horrible event.


Janet Reno, first female US attorney general, dies at 78 —  anet Reno, former US attorney general under President Bill Clinton, died Monday morning following a long battle with Parkinson's disease, her sister Maggy Hurchalla said. She was 78.   Reno, the nation's first-ever female attorney general, served in the Clinton White House from 1993 to 2001. What is Parkinson's disease? In a statement, former President Bill Clinton said that he and his wife, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, were "deeply saddened" by the passing of Reno, calling her "an extraordinary public servant who dedicated her life to advancing justice, equality, and innovations in criminal justice that would save and lift lives." "As Attorney General for all eight years of my Presidency, Janet worked tirelessly to make our communities safer, protect the vulnerable, and to strike the right balance between seeking justice and avoiding abuse of power," Clinton said in the statement, listing some of her top accomplishments. "It's fitting that she spent her last years with family and friends, living in the house her mother built with her own hands. Janet was her mother's daughter. I will always be grateful for her service, counsel, and friendship." Convictions and controversies As part of the Clinton administration, Reno oversaw the high-profile convictions of numerous bombers including Ted Kaczynski, the domestic terrorist infamously known as the "Unabomber;" Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols for their roles in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. "Speak out against the hatred, the bigotry and the violence in this land. Most haters are cowards. When confronted, they back down. When we remain silent, they flourish," Reno said one month after the Oklahoma City bombing. Reno's time in office was also bookended with a pair of major controversies that gripped the country. In 1993, she took office as the Waco, Texas, standoff was already underway. On the 51st day of the standoff, the attorney general ordered federal agents to raid the compound -- a decision that resulted in the death of approximately 80 members of the Branch Davidian sect. "The buck stops with me," Reno said after the incident. She later said on CNN's "Larry King Live" that her decision was "obviously wrong." In April 2000, Reno played a pivotal role in the saga of six-year-old Cuban immigrant Elian Gonzalez. Gonzalez, found off the coast of Fort Lauderdale in November 1999, was the only survivor among a group of 13 Cuban migrants trying to make it to the US. The incident sparked an international custody dispute between Gonzalez's relatives in the US and his father in Cuba. Reno ultimately ordered a raid that sent Gonzalez back to Cuba. When Clinton's administration was rocked by the Whitewater scandal, Reno was the person tasked with appointing special prosecutor Robert Fiske to lead the probe in 1994. The Clintons were never charged with criminal wrongdoing. In Clinton's second term -- months before his impeachment -- the Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted to cite Reno for contempt of Congress for failing to hand over key memos. Reno eventually provided those documents. Congress never moved forward with a vote on the matter. From Miami to Washington D.C. Born in 1938, Reno grew up in Miami, Florida, with parents who both worked as reporters for Miami newspapers. After attending Cornell University for her undergraduate degree, Reno enrolled at Harvard University for law school in the early 1960s. During her first year, she heard one of her heroes, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, speak at the Sanders Theater. "She was so wonderful and her voice was still so clear and so magnificent," Reno later recalled in a 1993 speech to the Women's Bar Association. "And I went up to her afterwards, and I said, "Mrs. Roosevelt, I think you are perfectly wonderful." And I will never forget her looking at me and saying, 'Why, thank you, my dear. Those words mean so much to me.' And she seemed to mean it." After law school, Reno worked for four years as an associate at Brigham & Brigham, before becoming partner at Lewis & Reno, where she stayed for four years. In 1971, Reno decided to work with the Florida House of Representatives as a staff director. After a brief return to the private sector, she was appointed as Florida's State Attorney in Miami, becoming the first woman to ever hold that position. Reno stayed in the job for about 15 years until Clinton tapped her to become the 78th US attorney general. After the White House At a ceremony to honor Reno in 2009, then-Attorney General Eric Holder praised his predecessor for her tenacity and tireless work ethic during her eight years in the job. "I don't know how many times she said to me, 'What's the right thing to do?'" Holder said. "It was never what's the easy thing, what's the political thing, or the expedient thing to do." In 2002, Reno ran to become Florida's governor, but narrowly lost in the Democratic primary. Reno died at her home in Miami. She had battled Parkinson's disease for 20 years.

Dear friend,                                                       I have just finished reading an article about Janet Reno. She was the first female US Attorney General. She had a very impressive professional and legal career. I am saddened by her death, she died at the age of seventy eight. She had a productive life.


Islamic State militants are kidnapping thousands of people to use as human shields —  TULUL AL-NASIR, Iraq — Islamic State militants have rounded up thousands of villagers at gunpoint to use as human shields as they retreat toward their stronghold of Mosul, the latest brutal war tactic inflicted on civilians in areas the group controls. Military officials and some who escaped said that the vast majority of people in more than half a dozen villages were forced to walk north toward the city as the army advanced from the south, and that those who refused were shot. Some villagers said they ran and hid in the desert to avoid being captured, sleeping out in the open for days. Others said they were taken but later managed to flee. Villagers also described mass executions of former policemen and army officers as the militants become increasingly paranoid about spies and collaborators. The kidnappings and killings compound fears about the plight of civilians as Iraqi forces advance toward the northern city of Mosul, a prize the militants don’t appear ready to give up without a hard fight. Humanitarian organizations have said they have grave concerns that civilians are at risk of being caught in crossfire, trapped between fighting or used as human shields. Holding civilian populations hostage is among the tactics the militants use to waylay advancing forces and complicate the U.S.-led airstrikes that support them. They also have set fire to oil wells and a sulfur plant south of the city, sending noxious fumes over hundreds of miles. Before launching the offensive for Mosul last week, Iraqi officials estimated that as many as 1.8 million residents were still in the city, with expectations of an exodus as forces advanced. But residents of Tulul al-Nasir, a gray, cinder-block settlement about 25 miles south of the city, said they were forced to flee the other way. [Signs of panic in the heart of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate] “They told us on the loudspeakers that whoever stays will be killed,” said Mohammed Ali, 45. They were ordered by the militants to walk about 15 miles north to Hamam al-Ali, a larger village that is still under Islamic State control. As he spoke, men crowded around him to list their family members who are missing. Some said dozens had been taken, with families divided in the confusion. More than 90 percent of the village’s 5,000 residents were kidnapped, said Iraqi army Col. Faisal Ali Abdellatif. “When they retreat from every village, they take the civilians with them to use as human shields,” he said. At her house in Tulul al-Nasir, Bushra Hussein recalled how two armed militants came by one recent day. “They said we had to gather on the road and that if they came back in 30 minutes and found us here, they’d kill us,” she said. With thousands of her neighbors, she was marched north, pushing her disabled 26-year-old son in his wheelchair, which broke after several days. Unable to move him, she was allowed to stay by the side of the road with him, where she remained until security forces advanced. Her husband, three other sons, three daughters and grandchildren were all forced to move on with the militants, she said. They called her briefly two days earlier to say they were in Mosul. “Thousands of families have been taken,” she said. “No one wanted to go.” [Sunnis fleeing Islamic State rule in Mosul brace for revenge] For those who refused to leave, the punishment was swift. On the outskirts of the village, Moyad Atallah, 40, was attending a funeral for his three brothers, who were shot after protesting. Eight Islamic State fighters in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns had arrived at their house at sundown to round them up, he said. One brother refused. “They shot him just there,” said Atallah, pointing at the dust outside his home. When his two other brothers then fought back, they were also killed, he said. The militants took their money and the family car, then kidnapped another brother and said they would return. The rest of the family fled and hid in an abandoned house nearby, including 11 now-orphaned children. The Islamic State’s utter disregard for the safety of civilians and its apparently deliberate use of human shields is putting people trapped in areas of active conflict at even greater risk as Iraqi forces advance, said Lynn Maalouf, a Beirut-based researcher for Amnesty International. Iraqi security forces have slowly won back villages and towns outside Mosul, but the militants have shown little sign that they will give up ground easily, and Iraqi and U.S. military officials say they expect the fight to get tougher as they near the city’s outskirts. As the militants are gradually squeezed, they have stepped up their savagery against local populations, residents have said. Abdulrahim al-Shammiri, the chairman of the human rights committee in the Iraqi parliament, said that 190 civilians were executed in Hamam al-Ali on Wednesday after being “kidnapped” from surrounding areas. Those who escaped said that former police or army officers were separated from their families and executed. “They killed 20 people in front of me,” said one 19-year-old from the village of Safina, who was held for three days in Hamam al-Ali before his family escaped at night, walking for days before reaching the Iraqi security forces. The family members were separated during their escape, and militants on motorbikes recaptured some of them while others watched from a ditch. Those who escaped were shot at as they fled; one woman was hit in the abdomen and is receiving treatment in Irbil. The family members declined to give their names because of concerns about the security of 30 relatives who are still missing. “All of us were against them, but they dragged us with them, all the village,” said his aunt, whose husband, four sons and three daughters are missing. Mustafa Salim contributed to this report.

Dear friend,                                                  I have just read an article about Islamic militants who are kidnapping innocent people and using them as human shields. They shoot anyone who refuses to help. The story has made me upset to read. There is so much evil and suffering in the world, I wish it would end.


A humanitarian crisis looms in Afghanistan as the number of displaced climbs —  KABUL — Abdulhalim fled the northern city of Kunduz this month after militants and security forces had been clashing for days. Now he’s 200 miles away in Kabul, sleeping in a tent and living on aid. He is part of a looming humanitarian crisis aid agencies here are struggling to contain. Before the current crisis, more than a million people had already been uprooted last year. This year, at least another million Afghans are “on the move” inside Afghanistan and across its borders, in what the United Nations warns is an alarming new wave of displaced people. Many, like Abdulhalim, fled violence or conflict; others escaped hardships such as poverty or drought. Still others were forced to return from Pakistan and Iran. Even as the numbers grew, Afghanistan agreed to accept Afghan asylum seekers deported from the European Union. The deal, signed in October, could lead the E.U. to construct a separate terminal for deportees at Kabul’s international airport, and as many as 100,000 Afghans could return. “This sudden increase [in the displaced] has put a lot of pressure on Afghanistan, which has had 30 years of war,” said Nader Farhad, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Kabul. “It’s not easy to put together the infrastructure, to provide the services that are required,” he said, adding that the displaced need everything from food and blankets to jobs and health care. “To the European countries, we say: Instead of investing in the return of Afghans to Afghanistan, tackle the root causes,” Farhad said. If the United Nations and other aid agencies fail to provide emergency assistance, “it will be a humanitarian crisis,” he said. Massive displacement has plagued Afghanistan for years, beginning with the Soviet invasion in 1979. That conflict kindled two decades of war. When the United States invaded in 2001, some 4 million Afghans were living in Pakistan and Iran. [Europe pressing harder on countries to take back deported migrants] Many of those refugees later returned, driven by hopes for stability and peace. But now, Afghanistan is witnessing some of its worst violence since the United States helped to topple the Taliban. More than 1,600 civilians were killed in the first six months of 2016, according to a U.N. report released in July. That was the highest number of civilian casualties in the first half of a year since the United Nations began keeping track in 2009. The violence has been driven by Taliban assaults on Afghan cities, putting more civilians in the crosshairs. And the clashes have pushed even more people from their homes. “The fighting was intense. There was artillery, rockets, aerial bombardment,” Abdulhalim, 38, said of this month’s days-long battle between Afghan and Taliban forces in Kunduz city. Insurgents briefly seized the city at the same time last year. “My children were screaming, our neighbors’ houses destroyed,” said Abdulhalim, who like many Afghans goes by one name. “We had no option but to leave.” In Helmand province, in the restive south, more than 60,000 people have been displaced this year, according to the United Nations, and militants have fought pitched battles in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. At least 5,000 of those displaced in Helmand were forced out only in the past two months, the United Nations says, and thousands more have fled to neighboring provinces and beyond. “In some provinces, the [armed] groups have more power there, and the government, it is very difficult for us to reach” the affected population, said Sayed Rohullah Hashemi, an adviser to the minister of refugees and repatriation. “We don’t have the capacity to do so, especially in our ministry. The government cannot reach everyone on its own.” In a dusty lot east of Kabul, the U.N. refugee agency has erected a center for the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees arriving from Pakistan. At least 5,000 refugees cross the border from Pakistan every day. The United Nations gives them a small stipend and vaccinates the children against measles and polio. [Afghan refugees, settled in Pakistan for decades, are being ordered to leave] The influx began after Pakistani authorities announced a deadline for Afghan refugees — of which there were 1.7 million registered with the United Nations — to leave. Many of the refugees had lived in Pakistan for decades, or were even born there after their parents had fled Afghanistan. Jumauddin, 27, was born in Pakistan to Afghan parents. Now he is heading to Kunduz province, to the Khanabad district, where Taliban fighters hold sway. He says he has no choice. “Kabul is too expensive, and maybe in Kunduz I can plow a plot of land,” Jumauddin said. “I know that there was fighting there even last week, but I have no other option.” The government is worried about the return of refugees to areas where insurgents are active. But right now, the Taliban controls more territory than at any time since 2001. “We are facing the return of tens of thousands of Afghans each month. . . . This will add very much to the vicious cycle of insecurity and joblessness,” said Bashir Bezhen, an Afghan analyst and political commentator. Reports have already surfaced of returning refugees clashing with locals over resources and land. The displaced are often rejected, or pushed into squalid camps. They also face the threat of forced eviction and rarely have access to clean water or food. “They are the poorest of the poor. They often live in open air,” the U.N.’s Farhad said. “But they should go back [to their homes] when they feel secure. It has to be voluntary and of their own accord.” In the area where Abdulhalim took shelter, the displaced worried that the government would force them out. The fighting in Kunduz city had subsided, but they couldn’t just pack up and go home. “They want us gone from here, but we don’t have anything, not even the money to get back,” Abdulhalim said. He first fled Kunduz on foot, with his children and the clothes on his back. Bezhen said that the government “is incapable of creating jobs for these people or of improving the economy in the remote places where they live.” He said criminal and terrorist networks will seek out the jobless and displaced youths. “It will push Afghanistan into deeper crisis,” Bezhen said. Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.

Dear friend,                                                                                I have just read an article about all of the displaced people in Afghanistan. It is truly saddening. There are over a million people who were forced to leave their homes just in the past year alone. They have no other options, I feel terrible for them.


Aleppo residents get warning by text message: You have 24 hours to leave —  Residents in war-ravaged eastern Aleppo received a dire warning early Sunday: Prepare for your city to be bombed and evacuate in the next 24 hours.   The warning came via text message, urging the sick and wounded to flee before a "strategically planned assault using high precision weapons occurs within 24 hours." Rebels were also given an ultimatum to lay down their arms and renounce their leadership, or be killed. The message was likely sent by the Syrian government as the regime is likely the only party capable of sending a mass text to the entire population. While there were no reports of a bombardment by Monday afternoon, witnesses told CNN that fighter jets had been spotted in the city, as deadly skirmishes were reported all over Aleppo. Who is left in Aleppo? Russian warplanes have since September last year backed the regime with airstrikes over rebel-held positions, pounding eastern Aleppo, where schools and hospitals have been crushed. The text message warning is seen as a response to Syrian rebels launching an offensive last month to break the regime's siege on eastern Aleppo. Assad: Go back to Turkey, or die Russia is the most powerful sponsor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, and its air power has been a key factor in helping the government solidify its control over the city. What would make you care about Aleppo? Assad has insisted that he has no option but to "to clean" Aleppo and press on with the offensive. "You have to keep cleaning this area and to push the terrorists to Turkey ... to go back to where they come from, or to kill them," he said. "It's going to be the springboard, as a big city, to move to other areas, to liberate other areas from the terrorists. This is the importance of Aleppo now." Fresh clashes broke out Sunday, with regime shelling killing at least 11 people in the al-Salehin neighborhood, according to the Aleppo Media Center activist group. Several other neighborhoods were shelled by ground artillery and heavy machine gunfire from helicopters, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said. Rebel factions targeted army positions on the northern front line, causing casualties among Syrian troops, the SOHR said. The Syrian Army accuses rebels in eastern Aleppo -- who they call terrorists -- of using civilians as human shields. Humanitarian crisis The UN warned last week that eastern Aleppo was on the brink of starvation ahead of a "killer" winter. Residents there told CNN that their food stocks were running out, and that markets that once sold fruit and vegetables were now empty. A kilogram of meat, they said, costs around $40, a price that most in Aleppo simply cannot pay. The last significant aid delivery was in July, and the area is extremely low on medicine and much-needed fuel to run hospital generators and ambulances. The city has seen considerable death and destruction wrought by the civil war that has raged for more than five years. About 1.5 million people still live in the regime-held parts of Aleppo, while 250,000-275,000 residents are in the devastated rebel-held east, according to the UN. In July, about 200,000 people fled the city over a two days, according to a UN official, citing the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Turkey eyes Kurdish-held city Turkey has been carrying out airstrikes in northern Syria to back the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is currently moving in on the ISIS-held city of al-Bab. The city lies strategically between Aleppo and the ISIS heartland of Raqqa. The Turkish Army said it hit 15 targets on Sunday, including two ISIS "headquarter" buildings, an ammunition storage and 10 defense fronts. Ankara has said once the city is liberated, it plans to move on to Manbij, stirring sectarian tensions that complicates internationally backed operations to free Syrian cities from ISIS control. Manbij was in August freed from ISIS rule by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab groups. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month said Ankara would not allow the Kurds to hold any territory west of the Iraqi city of Mosul. Manbij is just 40 kilometers south of the Turkish border. Turkey considers some of the Kurdish militia groups in the alliance as terrorists, including the YPG. But the SDF is supported and armed by the US, further complicating the conflict, which has already put Washington at loggerheads with Moscow. The former Cold War enemies, both of which are carrying out airstrikes in Syria, have long feuded over which groups should be targeted. The US supports and arms groups that it considers "moderate rebels," while Russia calls any rebel group that is opposed to the regime "terrorists."

Dear friend,                                                               I have just read an article about the citizens of Aleppo being warned to leave via text message. It is very sad and hard to imagine what it must be like to live in a country like that, where you may be forced to leave at any moment due to acts of violence and war.


Hate crimes against Muslims hit highest mark since 2001 —  Hate crimes against Muslims spiked last year to their highest level in more than a decade - an increase experts and advocates say was fueled by anger over terrorist attacks and anti-Islam rhetoric on the campaign trail.   Law enforcement agencies across the country reported 257 anti-Islamic incidents in 2015, up nearly 67 percent from the year before, according to FBI data released Monday.   That is significant in its own right, but even more so in historical context. The last time the FBI saw more than 160 anti-Islamic incidents was in 2001, when it reported 481. That was the year that radical Islamist terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, killing thousands and sparking a wave of anti-Muslim incidents.   Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that he believed that the anti-Muslim rhetoric that came out of the presidential campaign was to blame and that he feared there will be more hate crimes this year. "Whenever you have one of the nation's leading public figures in the person of Donald Trump mainstreaming and empowering Islamophobia in the nation, it's the inevitable result," he said.   A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not immediately return an email seeking comment.   Hate crimes overall increased about 6.7 percent from 2014 to 2015, but that increase still left such incidents below what they were a decade earlier. Anti-black incidents rose by about 7.6 percent, anti-Jewish incidents rose by about 9 percent, and incidents based on sexual orientation rose by about 3.5 percent during that time frame.   Before and after Trump's election, there were reports of hateful acts across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center, drawing on news accounts, social media postings and direct reports, said it had tallied 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation as of Friday. Last week, a Muslim student at San Diego State University reported that she was robbed by two men who made comments about Trump. Police believe she was targeted because she was wearing a hijab. The week before the election, a black church in Mississippi was burned and spray-painted with the words "Vote Trump." During his campaign, Trump vowed to have law enforcement conduct surveillance at mosques and called for at least a temporary ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States, measures that he suggested might prevent terrorist attacks. Asked on "60 Minutes" about reports of supporters harassing Latinos and Muslims, he said: "I am so saddened to hear that. And I say, 'Stop it.' "   Notably, the data from 2015 does not show an increase in anti-Latino incidents from the year before. Still, advocates say Trump's rhetoric is at least partly to blame for the spike in other incidents.   "I don't think there's any question at all that the Trump campaign contributed and contributed mightily to these numbers," said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center.   The data available is somewhat limited, analysts say, because law enforcement agencies provide numbers voluntarily to the FBI, and many did not report hate crimes. Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys show a far greater number of hate crimes than what is reported - hundreds of thousands each year.   The data largely confirms the findings of Brian Levin, a professor at California State University at San Bernardino, who wrote earlier this year about a surge in crimes against Muslims. In an interview Monday, Levin said he attributed the spike to three factors - anger after terrorist attacks like those in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris; a generally elevated level of prejudice against Muslims; and "the coalescence of a sociopolitical movement that labels Muslims as an enemy."   Levin said he found a spate of anti-Muslim incidents in the weeks immediately following the attacks in San Bernardino and Paris. After Paris, for example, a Florida man threatened violence at two mosques in two anti-Islamic diatribes.   But Levin said he did not expect that those would make 2015 an anomaly. Based on 2016 data in places such as Ohio, Texas, Delaware and New York, he estimated that anti-Muslim hate crimes are "either at or above the levels of 2015."

Dear friend,                                                       I have just finished reading an article about hate crimes against muslims and how they are significantly increasing in recent years. The article was very eye-opening and it made me think. I just wish that everyone could get along with each other.


Man kills two sons, himself, police say —  A man shot his two young sons and then killed himself in an apparent murder-suicide on Saturday, police said.   The father, identified as Christopher Cadenbach, said St. Louis County Police Department's Deputy Chief Kenneth Cox. He was wanted for domestic violence in Franklin County, Missouri, Cox said. As a result, the St. Louis County police had been looking for him. On Saturday afternoon, Cadenbach, 43, visited his mother and his two children. Amber Alert leads police to dad His mother became worried after hearing him say that he wasn't going to be taken alive, Cox said. She alerted police, who then issued an Amber Alert for his two abducted sons, Ethan, 5, and Owen, 4. Later that evening, a park ranger spotted a 2006 Ford Focus matching the Amber Alert description in a local park and alerted police. As soon as the officers arrived, shots rang out, Cox said. "He was apparently shooting his children. We tried to engage him and it appears he took his own life."

Dear friend,                                                                        I have just read a story about another police officer shooting. These seem to be happening all the time now and it is very upsetting. I hope that one day something can be done about all of this. It is sad to think about .


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.

Dear friend,                                                                                I just read an article about a 70 year old man living in a war torn city in Syria. The story was very sad and has made me think a lot about life. I feel terrible for the people who have to live in those conditions.


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

Dear friend,                                                                                I have just finished reading an article about an african elephant named Nosey. She has been held captive for 30 years. It is a very heartbreaking story and it makes me very sad to see her treated this way.


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

Dear friend, I have just finished reading an article that has made me upset. The article was about polar bears and the problems they are facing due to the shorter ice season in recent years. It is very troubling because the bears are suffering and dying due to the shortened ice seasons. I really hope scientists can find a solution soon.


'Utter devastation' after major quake, aftershocks hit New Zealand —  A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake pummeled central New Zealand early on Monday, killing at least two people, damaging roads and buildings and setting off hundreds of strong aftershocks.   Emergency response teams flew by helicopter to the region at the epicenter of the tremor, which struck just after midnight some 91 km (57 miles) northeast of Christchurch in the South Island, amid reports of injuries and collapsed buildings.   "It's just utter devastation, I just don't know ... that's months of work," New Zealand Prime Minister John Key told Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee after flying over the coastal town of Kaikoura, according to Brownlee's Twitter account. He described landslips in the area as "just horrendous". In a statement seen by Reuters, Key said of the likely damage bill: "You’ve got to believe it’s in the billions of dollars to resolve."   Powerlines and telecommunications were down, with huge cracks in roads, land slips and other damage to infrastructure making it hard to reach the worst-affected areas.   A tsunami warning that led to mass evacuations after the original quake was downgraded after large swells hit New Zealand's capital Wellington, in the North Island, and Christchurch.   Wellington was a virtual ghost town with workers ordered to stay away while the city council assessed the risk to buildings, several of which were damaged by the tremor. There were concerns that loose glass and masonry could be dislodged by severe weather hitting the capital, with 140 km per hour (85 mph) winds forecast.   Hundreds of aftershocks, the strongest a 6.2 quake at about 1.45 p.m. local time (0045 GMT), rattled the South Pacific country, fraying nerves in an area where memories of a deadly 2011 quake are still fresh.   Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealand's ruggedly beautiful South Island, is still recovering from the 6.3 quake in 2011 that killed 185 people.   New Zealand's Civil Defence declared a state of emergency for the Kaikoura region, centered on a tourist town about 150 km (90 miles) northeast of Christchurch, soon after Monday's large aftershock.   Kaikoura, a popular spot for whale watching, appeared to have borne the brunt of the quake. "Our immediate priority is ensuring delivery of clean water, food and other essentials to the residents of Kaikoura and the estimated 1,000 tourists in the town," Brownlee said.   The Navy's multi-role vessel HMNZS Canterbury was heading to the area, he said.   Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) said a 20-person rescue team and two sniffer dogs had arrived in the town. A second team was on standby in Christchurch, USAR said in a statement.   Police in the area around Christchurch reported 19 burglaries of homes and commercial properties after the quake as residents headed for higher ground.   "It is extremely disappointing that at a time when people are facing such a traumatic event and communities are coming together to support one another, there are others who are only interested in taking advantage,” Canterbury District Commander Superintendent John Price said in a statement.   TWIN QUAKES   Hours after the quake, officials said a slip dam caused by the quakes that had blocked the Clarence River north of the town had breached, sending a wall of water downstream.   A group of kayakers missing on the river was later reported safe.   New Zealand's Geonet measured Monday's first quake at magnitude 7.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.8. The quakes and aftershocks rattled buildings and woke residents across the country, hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter.   Geonet said four faults had ruptured, with one at the coast appearing to have slipped as much as 10 meters (33 feet). Government research unit GNS Science said the overnight tremor appeared to have been two simultaneous quakes which together lasted more than two minutes.   New Zealand lies in the seismically active "Ring of Fire", a 40,000 km arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Ocean. Around 90 percent of the world's earthquakes occur within this region.   Stock exchange operator NZX Ltd said markets traded normally, although many offices in the capital were closed. The New Zealand dollar initially fell to a one-month low before mostly recovering.   Fonterra, the world's biggest dairy exporter, said some its farms were without power and would likely have to dump milk.   Prime Minister Key postponed a trip to Argentina, where he had planned to hold a series of trade meetings ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in Peru this week, as he met disaster officials.   At least one of those killed was found in a house in Kaikoura that "collapsed like a stack of cards", Kaikoura Hospital's Dr Christopher Henry told Fairfax media. Two other people were pulled alive from the same building.   New Zealand media reported one of the pilots taking rescuers to the area was Richie McCaw, the recently retired captain of New Zealand's world champion All Blacks rugby team.   "At one point, the railway was way out over the sea - it had been pushed out by (land) slips. It would not have been a nice place to be at midnight last night," McCaw told the New Zealand Herald after helping fly the USAR team to Kaikoura.

Dear friend,                                          I am writing to tell you that I just read a horrifying article about a major 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit New Zealand on Monday. The property damage, loss of life, and injuries are going to be devastating once all the numbers are in. I feel very sickened and saddened after reading this news.


Suicide: Russian girl's death prompts national debate —  It's a day like any other day in a provincial city in central Russia. A 12-year-old girl is getting ready to go to school. Suddenly her phone rings. The next minute she is out of the door, saying she's meeting a friend and they will go to school together. Later the same day, when her mother turns up at the school, there is no sign of her daughter. No-one has seen her. Then the mother's phone rings, and she can tell by the ring tone that it's her daughter's phone. "Where are you, darling?" she asks with relief. "It's not your daughter," a strange voice replies. "I'm a doctor from A&E. Your daughter is dead." She had taken her own life. Social network subculture In the weeks and months that followed, the mother discovered how her daughter had been immersed in an online subculture of suicide involving images of self-harming, alternative reality games and a cult surrounding a 16-year-old girl who had killed herself in a violent fashion. This is the tragic story at the heart of a long, front-page article called Groups of Death in independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta on 16 May. Written by correspondent Galina Mursalieva, it alleges that Russia's most popular social network VKontakte (VK) has numerous groups used by Svengali-type figures to encourage vulnerable young people to kill themselves. These groups are regularly closed down, but others quickly spring up in their place. Emotional intensity The piece claims that a spate of at least 80 recent suicides can be linked to these online groups. Four of the deaths, including the one described above, occurred on the same day last December and in roughly the same manner. A note from Novaya Gazeta's editors at the top of the article urges every parent to read it to "save their children from a fateful step". Groups of Death has had an extraordinary impact. In little over a week, it has been viewed more than two million times and has sparked a stormy debate on social networks and beyond. One of the reasons it has gone viral is undoubtedly the emotional intensity of Galina Mursalieva's writing. But that has been singled out as one of its main shortcomings, too. Critics have accused her of treating a complex subject with tabloid sensationalism and allowing her personal involvement in the story to cloud her judgement. In particular, they question the emphasis that the writer and the bereaved parents have placed on the internet as a cause of juvenile suicide. A follow-up investigation by the Lenta.ru website presented a more nuanced, although no less disturbing, picture of internet subculture. It suggested that the people running the VK groups were not much older than their teenage members, and in many cases were exploiting suicide cults to boost their own egos or even earn money from online advertising. But Lenta.ru also admitted that at least some of the deaths mentioned by Novaya Gazeta could be linked to online grooming. ________________   Russia's high level of youth suicide Russia has world's third-highest number of suicides among adolescents Depression, anxiety and aggression are found in 20% of Russian teenagers; the Western average is no higher than 5% Suicidal thoughts come into the minds of 45% of Russian girls and 27% of young men Most suicides are linked to parents' alcoholism, family conflicts and abuse Statistics agency Rosstat says Russia's overall rate of suicide fell in 2015 to the lowest level for 50 years Source: Unicef 2011/Rosstat 2016 iWonder: How do we talk about teenage suicide? ________________   As well as appealing to parents, Novaya Gazeta also argued that it had wanted to goad the authorities into action. It said it had passed material to law enforcement agencies and informed media watchdog Roskomnadzor of its findings. Since publication, investigators in St Petersburg have launched a criminal case over groups on VK that allegedly promote suicide. But Novaya Gazeta has also been accused of colluding with the authorities, or at least giving them a useful pretext to further extend their control over the internet. It is an allegation emphatically denied by chief editor Dmitry Muratov. One of the ostensible aims of a controversial internet blacklist law that came into force in 2012 was to protect minors from material promoting suicide. Internet expert Anton Nosik believes that the Kremlin is now intent on getting to grips with online communities, having passed laws that have the potential to curb the activity of top bloggers and with key elections just around the corner. One thing that everyone appears to agree on is that adolescent suicide is a very serious problem in Russia. A 2011 Unicef report found that the country had the third-highest suicide rate in this age group in the world, more than three times the global average. As such, even some of Galina Mursalieva's critics concede that by getting people to talk about a subject that is too often ignored, she may have performed a useful public service. ________________   Are you affected by this? Samaritans The Samaritans helpline is available 24 hours a day for anyone in the UK struggling to cope. It provides a safe place to talk where calls are completely confidential. Phone for free: 116 123 Email: jo@samaritans.org Visit the Samaritans website Papyrus Papyrus offers support, practical advice and information to young people in the UK considering suicide and can also offer help and advice if you're concerned about someone you know. Phone: 0800 068 41 41 Telephone Doveriye (Telephone of Trust) In Russia, a confidential hotline for children is available on 8-800-2000-122

Dear friend,                                                                I have just ready a very disturbing story. A young girl in Russia has committed suicide. There are online groups that target young teenagers and kids and encourage them to harm themselves and to commit suicide. It is a very scary and sad thing.


Garden ponds 'playing role' in frog disease spread —  Garden ponds are playing a role in the spread of deadly frog diseases across the UK, a study suggests. Ranaviruses can infect amphibians, reptiles and fish. In the UK, they have devastated common frog populations. This research suggests that the introduction of infected animals from aquatic retailers into ponds or moving species between different ponds may be exacerbating the problem. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Dr Trent Garner, from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), told BBC News: "The virus seems to be spreading at a rate that exceeds the ability of a frog to hop, and there seems to be human-aided dispersal of the virus." Ranaviruses are a group of viruses found across the world and they affect different species in different ways. In the UK, one type of ranavirus was found to be present in the South East of England in the 1980s, and it has since spread. It can kill common frogs either by causing sores and blisters to form on the animal's skin or by causing their internal organs to bleed. "In a certain proportion of populations, the disease persists. And when it persists, frogs decline by around 85%, and they don't seem to be recovering," said Dr Garner. To analyse the movement of the disease in the UK, scientists looked at two decades of data recorded by a citizen science scheme called the Frog Mortality Project, which is now coordinated through Garden Wildlife Health. Genetic records suggested that ranavirus was not always present in the UK, and had probably been introduced to the UK on two separate occasions. The study also found that while infection is spread by the natural movement of amphibians, garden ponds could also be playing a key role. Dr Garner said: "Potentially garden ponds can act as stepping stones for infected animals to move around and reach new sites." He said that taking frogspawn or frogs from one pond and placing them in another could be helping to spread ranavirus. "There are also other species that could potentially carry ranavirus - ornamental fish for example. So I do think there is a case to be made to investigate their role in infections." Lead author Dr Stephen Price, from University College London, ZSL and Queen Mary University of London, said: "Ranavirus is one of the most serious health threats currently facing the UK's amphibian population. "So our findings that humans seem to have helped move the virus around, facilitating its rapid spread, could be translated into some straightforward ways to manage the risk of disease outbreaks." He added: "We certainly don't want to discourage people from adding ponds to their urban gardens - this remains one of the most positive steps we can all take to support wildlife. "But equally we would strongly urge people to try to limit how much potentially-infectious material they're moving into and out of their gardens in the process."

Dear friend,                                     I have just read an article that explains how garden ponds are helping to spread diseases among frogs in the UK. The diseases infect frogs and fish as well. It has had a large impact on the local frog population. The story upset me because I don't want any animal to suffer.


3,800 dead ... and more on the way —  (CNN)Rickety boats that should never have sailed. Unscrupulous smugglers with no regard for life. And desperate people risking everything. That mix of fear, hope and greed has now produced a horrifying record. More people have drowned in the Mediterranean this year than ever before: at least 3,800. That's about 90 a week. It's nearly 13 every day. Here's a look at how we got to this point. Why are they doing it? They have no choice. They are Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, escaping war. They are Nigerians and Eritreans in search of a better life. More than 65 million people have fled their homes; 1 in 3 of them are refugees. We're in the midst of the largest migration of refugees since World War II. The sheer number dwarfs the population of many countries. Would you risk these odds? Even though fewer people are crossing this year than in 2015, more people are dying as they try to make the journey. One person out of every 88 has been lost at sea trying to reach the shores of Greece, Italy or Spain. That means they're 90 times more likely to die on the journey than an American is likely to die of gunshot wounds. Where are they heading? There are three main routes across the Mediterranean. Eastern Route: Last year, the route from Turkey to Greece was the busiest by far, but a deal between the European Union and Ankara has brought the numbers down. Still, it remains a heavily trafficked route. Central Route: Libya has no government, which gives people smugglers plenty of freedom to operate out of north Africa. Traffic has been busy this year between Libya and Italy. Central Route: Libya has no government, which gives people smugglers plenty of freedom to operate out of north Africa. Traffic has been busy this year between Libya and Italy. Western Route: West Africa is far from the Middle Eastern hotspots and poor sub-Saharan African countries that produce most migrants to Europe. And relatively small numbers of people try to reach the continent from there. But even so, a steady trickle crosses the sea at the narrow point south of Spain.  Where are they fleeing from? More than a million people have fled Somalia. Nearly three million have escaped Afghanistan. But it is Syria, wracked by civil war for more than five years, that produces the most refugees: nearly five million. Just how bad is it in Syria? The Syrian refugees may outnumber any other country's refugees, but they make up less than half the number of Syrians driven from their homes by the war. Far more are internally displaced -- still in Syria, but living like refugees in the country. And then, of course, an unknown number of people have been killed in the war. International agencies stopped trying to count the dead years ago. The latest estimates by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the number somewhere around 430,000. If that's right, it means about one out of every 50 people in the country has been killed. Where do they go? President Obama vowed that the United States would resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, and by August, the administration was saying it would surpass the target. Justin Trudeau vowed Canada would take 25,000 when he became prime minister last year. But far more are claiming asylum in Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country would take one million refugees. And all across Europe, refugees from Syria are claiming asylum. But far more stay in the Middle East. Syria's own neighbors host the vast majority of people trying to escape the war. And there's little hope the war will end any time soon -- so the refugees will keep fleeing. And they will keep dying.

Dear friend,                                             I have just read an article about the horrible conditions of the syrian people and the refugees who are fleeing the country. I feel awful for these people and would like to find a way to help them at least to be more comfortable. It was a very moving article.


BREAKING NEWS: Angry Villagers Attack Anti-Poaching Unit Rangers In Mozambique —  Three anti-poaching rangers, two South Africans and a Mozambican, were hospitalized after being beaten by villagers after they apprehended a a poacher.   Sean van Niekerk, of Limpopo, and two colleagues were whipped, stabbed and pelted with rocks by a mob in a small Mozambican town near South Africa’s Komatipoort border.   Van Niekerk, 25, was discharged from Nelspruit Medi-Clinic on Thursday, where he was treated for a minor skull fracture, stab wounds and injuries to his face and back. He said it would not stop him returning to the field to help save wildlife. Van Niekerk said they were called last weekend to assist a ranger who had caught a poacher near Sabi river.   “My colleagues and I, with four Mozambican police officers, were transporting the poacher to the station, which was about 30km away, when he escaped from the vehicle. I chased after the poacher and caught him. I handed him back to the police officer. Suddenly, a mob from the community started moving towards us,” said Van Niekerk. The police officers who were with them ran away.   “We, the rangers, were the targets. I called for help. We were boxed in. We had no weapons so we had to fight back to stay alive until the helicopter arrived. We were hit by about 10 people, who were armed with blunt machetes. I was stabbed with a bottle, stoned and whipped,” he said.   He said it was only when the helicopter arrived that the mob backed off.   Would you please kindly share this and make it go viral, so the incompetent, corrupt police officers are exposed. Thank you.

Dear friend,                                                                                I am writing to let you know about an article that I just finished reading. Some anti-poaching rangers were captured by a poacher and attacked by the locals of the village. I feel bad for them, they were just trying to protect the animals.


Endangered Wildlife Are At Risk After 200,000 Liters Of Fuel Leak Into British Colombia’s Coastal Waters —  Ten days ago, diesel fuel was leaked into Heiltsuk First Nation water near Bella Bella, British Colombia. The leak was caused by a tugboat which crashed in a remote region off British Columbia’s Central Coast.   Following the oil leak, underwater dive images revealed endangered wildlife including abalone, amidst the fuel spill area. Efforts are being made by the Heiltsuk to help recover this protected species. Divers also discovered schools of juvenile herring around the sunken Nathan E. Stewart tugboat.   The outer boom which was put in place to contain the spilled oil had broke free on Friday causing the oil to spread and bad weather had prevented clean up crews from working on the spill for four consecutive days. By Saturday, salvage crews had recovered more than 40 percent of the 200,000 liters of fuel estimated to be in the vessel, but the damage had already been done.   Mike Reid, the Heiltsuk Aquatics Manager said that there is an increased concern about the marine life in the Gale Passage. This is an extremely sensitive ecological and marine rescue area and there is a crucial herring spawning area which is located at the south end of the passage.   “In the first week of the spill, we had the largest tides of the month at 17.4 feet,” he said in a release. “Even without bad weather, the speed of tides rushing through the spill site are likely to flush diesel into the area.”   The local clam fishery has been shut down and BC NDP leader John Horgan criticized the spill response.   “It was tragic to see the sheen of diesel on the water,” Horgan said, adding. “You couldn’t have picked a worse place to drop this boat into the bottom of the ocean.”   The company that owns the tugboat, Kirby Offshore Marine has made their apologies to the Heiltsuk First Nation and gave thanks to the agencies involved in the spill cleanup.   According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), diesel is one of the most toxic types of oil for marine creatures.   Depending weather conditions in the area, 1500 feet of kepner boom will be placed around the primary and secondary containment boom for additional protection.

Dear friend,                                                                                I have just read an article about a massive fuel leak in British Colombia. It is threatening all of the wildlife in the area, as well as the water. I am worried about this and hope there is a way to stop it before it gets out of hand.