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Bulgarian veterinary authorities say they will cull 24,000 additional pigs amid signs of an outbreak of African swine fever at a pig farm in the northeast part of the country.
The report Friday represented a continuation of an outbreak that was first detected at six breeding farms in the summer and led to the culling of more than 130,000 pigs in August.
The latest outbreak was detected at a farm in the village of Nikola Kozlevo in the region of Shumen, food safety officials said.
Health officials said there were 42 registered outbreaks of African swine fever in the country in 2019.
The disease does not affect humans but is highly contagious among pigs.
In August, industry officials expressed concerns that the virus could hit the nation’s entire pig herd of 500,000 and cause more than $1.1 billion in damage.
The European Commission has set aside about $10 million to help fight the disease. Bulgarian lawmakers have approved legislation for 2020 intended to regulate conditions for raising domestic pigs and enhance biosecurity measures.
This article contains material from Reuters and The Sofia Globe.
A father and son who were battling flames for two days became the latest victims of the worst wildfire season in Australian history, and the path of destruction widened in at least three states Saturday because of strong winds and high temperatures.
The death toll in the wildfire crisis rose to 23, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said after calling up about 3,000 reservists to battle the escalating fires, which were expected to be particularly fierce throughout the weekend.
“We are facing another extremely difficult next 24 hours,” Morrison said at a televised news conference. “In recent times, particularly over the course of the balance of this week, we have seen this disaster escalate to an entirely new level.”
Dick Lang, 78, an acclaimed bush pilot and outback safari operator, and his son Clayton, 43, were identified by Australian authorities after their bodies were found Saturday on a highway on Kangaroo Island. Their family said the losses left them “heartbroken and reeling from this double tragedy.”
Lang, known as “Desert Dick,” led tours for travelers throughout Australia and other countries. “He loved the bush, he loved adventure and he loved Kangaroo Island,” his family said.
Clayton Lang, one of Dick’s four sons, was a renowned plastic surgeon who specialized in hand surgery.
Smoke from a fire at Batemans Bay, Australia, billows into the air, Jan. 4, 2020.
The fire danger increased as temperatures rose Saturday to record levels across Australia, surpassing 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in Canberra, the capital, and reaching a record-high 48.9 C (120 F) in Penrith, in Sydney’s western suburbs.
Video and images shared on social media showed blood red skies taking over Mallacoota, a coastal town in Victoria where as many as 4,000 residents and tourists were forced to shelter on beaches as the navy tried to evacuate as many people as possible.
‘It’s not safe to move’
By Saturday evening, 3,600 firefighters were battling blazes across New South Wales state. Power was lost in some areas as fires downed transmission lines, and residents were warned that the worst might be yet to come.
“We are now in a position where we are saying to people it’s not safe to move, it’s not safe to leave these areas,” state Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters. “We are in for a long night and I make no bones about that. We are still yet to hit the worst of it.”
Morrison said the governor general had signed off on the calling up of reserves “to search and bring every possible capability to bear by deploying army brigades to fire-affected communities.”
Defense Minister Linda Reynolds said it was the first time that reservists had been called up “in this way in living memory and, in fact, I believe for the first time in our nation’s history.”
A satellite image shows wildfires burning east of Obrost, Victoria, Australia, Jan. 4, 2020.
The deadly wildfires, which have been raging since September, have already burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) and destroyed more than 1,500 homes.
The early and devastating start to Australia’s summer wildfires has also been catastrophic for the country’s wildlife, likely killing nearly 500 million birds, reptiles and mammals in New South Wales alone, Sydney University ecologist Chris Dickman told the Sydney Morning Herald. Frogs, bats and insects are excluded from his estimate, making the toll on creatures much greater.
Climate change effects
Experts say climate change has exacerbated the unprecedented wildfires around the world. Morrison has been criticized for his repeated refusal to say climate change has been affecting the fires, instead deeming them a natural disaster.
Some residents yelled at the prime minister earlier in the week during his visit to New South Wales, where people were upset with the lack of fire equipment their towns had. After fielding criticism for taking a family vacation in Hawaii as the wildfire crisis unfolded in December, Morrison announced he was postponing visits to India and Japan that were scheduled for this month.
The government has committed 20 million Australian dollars ($14 million) to lease four firefighting aircraft for the duration of the crisis, and the helicopter-equipped HMAS Adelaide was deployed to assist evacuations from fire-ravaged areas.
A DC-10 air tanker makes a pass to drop fire retardant on a bushfire in North Nowra, south of Sydney, Australia, Jan. 4, 2020.
The deadly fire on Kangaroo Island broke containment lines Friday and was described as “virtually unstoppable” as it destroyed buildings and burned through more than 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) of Flinders Chase National Park. While the warning level for the fire was reduced Saturday, the Country Fire Service said it was still a risk to lives and property.
Rob Rogers, New South Wales Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner, warned that the fires could move “frighteningly quick.” Embers carried by the wind had the potential to spark new fires or enlarge existing blazes.
Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fizsimmons said the 264,000-hectare (652,000-acre) Green Wattle Creek fire in a national park west of Sydney could spread into Sydney’s western suburbs. He said crews had been doing “extraordinary work” by setting controlled fires and using aircraft and machinery to try to keep the flames away.
More than 130 fires were burning in New South Wales, with at least half of them out of control.
Firefighters were battling a total of 53 fires across Victoria state, and conditions were expected to worsen with a southerly wind change. About 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) of bushland has already been burned through.
Something positive
In a rare piece of good news, the number of people listed as missing or unaccounted for in Victoria was reduced from 28 to six.
“We still have those dynamic and dangerous conditions — the low humidity, the strong winds and, what underpins that, the state is tinder dry,” Victoria Emergency Services Commissioner Andrew Crisp said.
Thousands have already fled fire-threatened areas in Victoria, and local police reported heavy traffic flows on major roads.
“If you might be thinking about whether you get out on a particular road close to you, well, there’s every chance that a fire could hit that particular road and you can’t get out,” Crisp said.
Ride-share company Uber and on-demand meal delivery service Postmates have sued to block a broad new California law aimed at giving wage and benefit protections to people who work as independent contractors.
The lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Los Angeles argues that the law set to take effect Wednesday violates federal and state constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.
Uber said it would try to link the lawsuit to another legal challenge filed in mid-December by associations representing freelance writers and photographers.
The California Trucking Association filed the first challenge to the law in November on behalf of independent truckers.
The law creates the nation’s strictest test by which workers must be considered employees and it could set a precedent for other states.
Worker statements
The latest challenge includes two independent workers who wrote about their concerns with the new law.
“This has thrown my life and the lives of more than a hundred thousand drivers into uncertainty,” ride-share driver Lydia Olson wrote in a Facebook post cited by Uber.
Postmates driver Miguel Perez called on-demand work “a blessing” in a letter distributed by Uber. He said he used to drive a truck for 14 hours at a time, often overnight.
“Sometimes, when I was behind the wheel, with an endless shift stretching out ahead of me like the open road, I daydreamed about a different kind of job — a job where I could choose when, where and how much I worked and still make enough money to feed my family,” he wrote.
The lawsuit contends that the law exempts some industries but includes ride-share and delivery companies without a rational basis for distinguishing between them. It alleges that the law also infringes on workers’ rights to choose how they make a living and could void their existing contracts.
Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego countered that she wrote the law to extend employee rights to more than a million California workers who lack benefits, including a minimum wage, mileage reimbursements, paid sick leave, medical coverage and disability pay for on-the-job injuries.
Previous Uber efforts
She noted that Uber had previously sought an exemption when lawmakers were crafting the law, then said it would defend its existing labor model from legal challenges. It joined Lyft and DoorDash in a vow to each spend $30 million to overturn the law at the ballot box in 2020 if they didn’t win concessions from lawmakers next year.
“The one clear thing we know about Uber is they will do anything to try to exempt themselves from state regulations that make us all safer and their driver employees self-sufficient,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “In the meantime, Uber chief executives will continue to become billionaires while too many of their drivers are forced to sleep in their cars.”
The new law was a response to a legal ruling last year by the California Supreme Court regarding workers at the delivery company Dynamex.
The United States has designated Asaib Ahl Al-Haq as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, saying the Iraqi militia is a proxy for Iran.
A U.S. State Department statement issued Friday also said two of the group’s leaders were being sanctioned.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the militia and its leaders “violent proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The State Department said Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, also known as the League of the Righteous, is backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, which has been similarly designated by the United States.
The State Department said it also designated Qais al-Khazali, leader of Asaib Ahl Al-Haq, and his brother Laith al-Khazali, another leader of the group, as specially designated global terrorists.
Such designations will freeze the U.S.-related assets of the group and the two leaders, generally ban Americans from doing business with them and make it a crime to provide support or resources to the militia.
The move came hours after a U.S. drone strike killed the powerful commander of the elite Quds Force in an attack in Baghdad, igniting outrage in Iran.
Qassem Soleimani was killed in an attack on two vehicles at Baghdad International Airport early Friday.
Tehran has vast influence and supports many Shiite militias based in neighboring Iraq. Baghdad has attempted to balance its relations between the United States and Iran, both of which provide crucial military and financial support to the struggling government.
The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State said Saturday it did not conduct any airstrikes near Camp Taji north of Baghdad.
Iraq’s military also denied Saturday that an airstrike had taken place on a medical convoy in Taji, north of Baghdad.
Earlier Saturday, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces umbrella grouping of paramilitary groups said airstrikes near camp Taji had killed six people and critically wounded three. Iraqi state television had said they were U.S. airstrikes.
“FACT: the coalition … did not conduct airstrikes near Camp Taji (north of Baghdad) in recent days,” a spokesman said on twitter.
The PMF said the attacks hit a convoy of medics, not senior leaders as reported in some media. However, the PMF later issued another statement saying that no medical convoys were targeted in Taji.
A U.S. airstrike on Baghdad airport Friday killed Qassem Soleimani, Tehran’s most prominent military commander and the architect of its growing influence in the Middle East, and the leader of Iraq’s PMF Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
The overnight attack, authorized by U.S. President Donald Trump, was a major escalation in a “shadow war” in the Middle East between Iran and the United States and American allies, principally Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The PMF are holding an elaborate funeral procession for both men and others who died in the same airstrike starting in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, moving toward the Shiite holy city of Kerbala and ending in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Thousands gathered in Baghdad ahead of the start of the procession early Saturday morning, some waving Iraqi and militia flags.
The death toll from floods in Indonesia’s capital rose to 47 Saturday as rescuers found more bodies amid receding floodwaters, disaster officials said.
Monsoon rains and rising rivers submerged a dozen districts in greater Jakarta and caused landslides in the Bogor and Depok districts on the city’s outskirts as well as in neighboring Lebak, where a dozen people were buried.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said the fatalities also included those who had drowned or been electrocuted since rivers broke their banks early Wednesday after torrential rains throughout New Year’s Eve. Three elderly people died of hypothermia.
It was the worst flooding since 2007, when 80 people were killed when Jakarta was inundated by monsoon rains for 10 days.
People rest at a temporary shelter in Jakarta, Indonesia, Jan. 3, 2020. Severe flooding in the capital as residents celebrated the new year has killed dozens of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
Poor parts of city hit hardest
Four days after the region of 30 million people was struck by flashfloods, waters have receded in many middle-class districts, but conditions remained grim in narrow riverside alleys where the city’s poor live.
At the peak of the flooding, about 397,000 people sought refuge in shelters across the greater metropolitan area as floodwaters reached up to 6 meters (19 feet) in some places, Wibowo said. Data released by his agency showed about 173,000 people were still unable to return home, mostly in the hardest-hit area of Bekasi.
More than 152,000 people remain crammed into 98 emergency shelters with sufficient supplies in Jakarta’s satellite city of Bekasi, where rivers burst their banks. Much of the city was still submerged in muddy waters up to 2 meters (6.5 feet) high, according to the agency.
Those returning to their homes found streets covered in mud and debris. Cars that had been parked in driveways were swept away, landing upside down in parks or piled up in narrow alleys. Sidewalks were strewn with sandals, pots and pans and old photographs. Authorities took advantage of the receding waters to clear away mud and remove piles of wet garbage from the streets.
Electricity was restored to tens of thousands of residences and businesses.
Jakarta’s Halim Perdanakusuma domestic airport reopened Thursday; its runway had been submerged.
Rain, flooding threat remains
The head of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency Dwikorita Karnawati said more downpours were forecast for the capital in coming days and the potential for extreme rainfall will continue until next month across Indonesia.
The government Friday kicked off cloud seeding in an attempt to divert rain clouds from reaching greater Jakarta. Authorities warned that more flooding was possible until the rainy season ends in April.
The flooding has highlighted Indonesia’s infrastructure problems.
Jakarta is home to 10 million people, or 30 million including those in its greater metropolitan area. It is prone to earthquakes and flooding and is rapidly sinking because of uncontrolled extraction of ground water. Congestion is also estimated to cost the economy $6.5 billion a year.
President Joko Widodo announced in August that the capital will move to a site in sparsely populated East Kalimantan province on Borneo island, known for rainforests and orangutans.
Global powers warned Friday that the world has become a more dangerous place and urged restraint after the U.S. assassinated Iran’s top general, although Britain and Germany also suggested that Iran shared blame for provoking the targeted killing that dramatically ratcheted up tensions in the Mideast.
China, Russia and France, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, took a dim view of the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s airport early Friday that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The White House said in a tweet that Soleimani, who led the elite Quds Force responsible for Iran’s foreign campaigns, “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”
“We are waking up in a more dangerous world. Military escalation is always dangerous,” France’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Amelie de Montchalin told RTL radio. “When such actions, such operations, take place, we see that escalation is underway.”
Russia likewise characterized the deadly U.S. strike as “fraught with serious consequences.” A Foreign Ministry statement warned that “such actions don’t help resolve complicated problems in the Middle East, but instead lead to a new round of escalating tensions.”
China described itself as “highly concerned.”
“Peace in the Middle East and the Gulf region should be preserved,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. “We urge all parties concerned, especially the United States, to maintain calm and restraint and avoid further escalation of tensions.”
But while echoing the concerns of other Security Council members about spiraling tensions, Britain and Germany broke ranks, voicing qualified understanding for the U.S. position.
German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer described the U.S. strike as “a reaction to a whole series of military provocations for which Iran bears responsibility,” pointing to attacks on tankers and a Saudi oil facility, among other events.
“We are at a dangerous escalation point and what matters now is contributing with prudence and restraint to de-escalation,” she said. Germany currently sits on the U.N. Security Council but is not a permanent member.
The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said “we have always recognized the aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qasem Soleimani.”
“Following his death, we urge all parties to de-escalate,” he said. “Further conflict is in none of our interests.”
Montchalin, the French minister, indicated urgent reconciliation efforts are being launched behind the scenes. French President Emmanuel Macron and his foreign minister were reaching out to “all the actors in the region,” she said.
In the Mideast, the strike provoked waves of shock, fury and fears of worse to come.
Iraq’s most powerful Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said in a speech during Friday prayers that the country must brace for “very difficult times.”
In Iran, a hard-line adviser to the country’s supreme leader who led Friday prayers in Tehran likened U.S. troops in Iraq to “insidious beasts” and said they should be swept from the region.
“I am telling Americans, especially Trump, we will take a revenge that will change their daylight into to a nighttime darkness,” said the cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami.
Haben Girma, a lawyer born deaf and blind, has advocated for accessibility from her hometown of Oakland, California, all the way to the White House. Now, she has written a book about her journey.
In a phone interview with VOA, Girma read questions on a braille keyboard after they were typed out by an interpreter. She said her parents, immigrants from Ethiopia and Eritrea, refused to listen to those who said she could not do certain things.
“One of the biggest challenges is people’s attitudes. People would say to my parents, oh, poor thing, she’ll never go to school, she’ll never get a job. And that was really hard for my parents to hear. It’s hard for me to hear, too,” she said. “Kids with disabilities want to hear that they’ll be successful. But society often tells us, from very young, that we won’t do anything.”
Girma said she was fortunate to grow up in California’s Bay Area, where disability rights are well-established and numerous resources exist. She went to public schools where braille books, typewriters, assistive software and a special resource room were available. Still, she encountered challenges. In middle school, she discovered she was failing a class because she could not hear assignments the teacher was making from the back of the classroom. Later, at Lewis Clark College in Portland, Oregon, she could not read the menu at the school cafeteria because there was no braille version available.
The challenges made her want to make a difference for others. In 2013, Girma became the first deaf and blind student to graduate from Harvard Law School.
“There’s a lot of discrimination against people with disabilities. And I wanted to help change that,” she said. “Getting a law degree, building up your advocacy skills is a great way to build up the tools to help other people.”
Taking Scribd to court
In 2014, Girma put her legal skills to use when she sued Scribd, an online publishing platform and book subscription service, for discrimination because they weren’t making texts accessible to the blind. Girma argued the service wasn’t complying with the law under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against those with disabilities. The company claimed that because it operates online and doesn’t provide services in a physical space, the ADA laws didn’t apply.
Ultimately, a U.S. district court ruled that the ADA applies to digital services and online businesses must make their services accessible to all.
“That was a really exciting victory to help blind people get access to more books. I love reading. Books are a powerful way to learn more about our world,” she told VOA. “I want to help make sure more people had books, and also for me, because when we remove barriers that also helps those of us with disabilities who are also advocates.”
The cover of Haben Girma’s book, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law
She has traveled the world, meeting with local disability advocates and sharing her story. This included a trip to Ethiopia in 2015 where she met people pushing for more access to schooling and to improve the portrayal of deaf and blind people on television and radio. She said she tells organizations and businesses to stop looking at disability access as a charity and start looking at it as an opportunity.
“When you do disability accessibility you’re not doing charity. You’re giving powerful work that helps your organization grow. It helps you reach more customers and it drives revenue,” she said. “So I want all organizations including organizations in Africa to stop treating disability as a charity and treat it as an important part of your organization.”
She hopes her book, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, helps readers identify what she calls “ableism,” the assumption that disabled people are inferior.
“We are not inferior. But society often sends this message. Through the stories in the book, funny stories, moving stories, I teach people to identify ableism to spot it when it’s happening and then to take steps to remove ableism,” she said.
She also hopes to inspire young people who may become the next generation of disability advocates and boundary breakers.
“I wanted kids to have more role models. You can be different. You can have something considered a severe disability and still succeed,” she said.
O-Town is an American boy band formed from the first season of the MTV-produced reality television series “Making the Band in 2000.” They released their first album in years this summer, “The O.T.W.N. Album” after reuniting in 2014 after a 10-year hiatus.
The U.S. airstrike that killed a prominent Iranian general in Baghdad raises tensions even higher between Tehran and Washington, after months of trading attacks and threats across the wider Middle East.
How Iran will respond remains in question as well, though its supreme leader warned that a “harsh retaliation is waiting” for those who killed Revolutionary Guard Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani early Friday morning. That could include anything, from challenging U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, firing ballistic missiles or deploying the asymmetrical proxy forces Iran has cultivated to cover for its long-sanctioned conventional forces.
Soleimani’s death is the latest in a series of escalating incidents traces back to President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. However, overall enmity between Iran and the U.S. date back to its 1979 Islamic Revolution, as well as a 1953 U.S.-backed coup in Tehran that cemented the power of its ruling shah over an elected prime minister.
Here’s where things stand now:
Burning debris are seen on a road near Baghdad International Airport, which according to Iraqi paramilitary groups were caused by three rockets hitting the airport in Iraq, January 3, 2020.
THE GENERAL’S KILLING
A U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s international airport killed Soleimani, 62, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, and five others. The Defense Department said it killed Soleimani because he “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” It also accused Soleimani of approving the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week. Soleimani led the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s Quds, or Jerusalem, Force. That included overseeing forces fighting in Syria, as well as militias that targeted U.S. forces in Iraq with deadly bomb attacks after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Still image taken from a U.S. military handout video purports to show Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) removing an unexploded limpet mine from the side of the Kokuka Courageous Tanker.
MONTHS OF ATTACKS
Citing an unspecified threat from Iran, the White House in May ordered a U.S. aircraft carrier to rush to the Persian Gulf. Soon after, explosions the U.S. blames on Iranian-laid mines targeting oil tankers near the crucial Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of all oil passes. Iran denied being involved, though it did seize oil tankers in response to one of its tankers being seized off Gibraltar. Iran also shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone. Trump pulled back from retaliating for the attack. Meanwhile, attacks on Saudi Arabia’s energy industry escalated to a missile-and-drone strike in September temporarily halving its oil production. Israel meanwhile has repeatedly struck Iran-linked targets in Syria in recent years and has warned against any permanent Iranian presence on the frontier. The attacks culminated with American airstrikes hitting Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and those militiamen attacking the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
FILE – President Donald Trump holds up a proclamation declaring his intention to withdraw from the JCPOA Iran nuclear agreement after signing it in the Diplomatic Room at the White House in Washington, May 8, 2018.
IRAN’S FALTERING NUCLEAR DEAL
The attacks came after Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw America from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. The 2015 accord saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Trump re-imposed American sanctions and levied even harsher ones, crippling its crucial oil industry. Iran initially proposed a policy called “strategic patience,” hoping to wait Trump out. But as Europe largely hasn’t been able to offer Tehran a way around American sanctions, Iran has begun taking steps away from the deal. That has included breaking enrichment, stockpile and centrifuge limitations, as well as restarting its program at an underground facility. Tehran appears poised to take a new step away from the deal beginning from Sunday.
FILE – Hezbollah fighters, holding flags, attend a memorial assembly in Tefahta village, southern Lebanon, Feb. 13, 2016.
IRAN’S MEANS OF RETALIATION
Iran’s conventional military force is limited. The backbone of its air power remains pre-revolution American F-4s, F-5s and F-14s, with a mix of other Soviet, French and aging aircraft. That fleet is outgunned by the modern U.S.-supplied fighter jets flown by Israel and the Gulf Arab states. To counter that, Iran has put much of its money toward developing a ballistic missile program operated by the Guard. Iran could fall back on its regional militant allies or proxies to launch an attack, like Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon’s Hezbollah or Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The U.S. has blamed car bombs and kidnappings never claimed by Iran on Tehran as well. The Guard also routinely harasses U.S. Navy vessels in Persian Gulf and surrounding waterways, while Iran has surface-to-sea missile batteries along its coast as well.
FILE – In this Nov. 19, 2019, photo made available by U.S. Navy, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, left, the air-defense destroyer HMS Defender and the guided-missile destroyer USS Farragut transit the Strait of Hormuz.
AMERICA’S BROAD MIDEAST PRESENCE
The Persian Gulf hosts a series of major American military installations. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, which oversees the region, is based in Bahrain, an island nation off the coast of Saudi Arabia that is home to over 7,000 American troops. Kuwait hosts over 13,000 American troops and the U.S. Army’s Central forward headquarters. Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is the largest port of call for the U.S. Navy outside of America. The UAE hosts 5,000 U.S. military personnel, many at Abu Dhabi’s Al-Dhafra Air Base, where American drones and advanced F-35 jetfighters are stationed. The forward headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command is at Qatar’s sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base, home to some 10,000 American troops. In Oman, the sultanate allows thousands of overflights and hundreds of landings a year, while also granting access to ports and its bases. Meanwhile, U.S. forces are in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
FILE – In an undated photo from 1979, protestors burn an effigy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during a demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran.
A HISTORY OF ENMITY
Tensions between Iran and the U.S. trace back decades. For Iranians, they point to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that toppled Mohammad Mosaddegh and cemented the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi served as a key U.S. ally for decades after, buying billions of dollars of weapons and allowing America to spy on the Soviet Union from his country. Over time, however, he eliminated all political opposition and seized all power in the country. By 1979, the fatally ill shah fled the country. The 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis soon followed, a history the two countries remain captive to until today.
Protests over constant blackouts in southern Nigeria left a regional capital in darkness for a 10th day Thursday, after angry youths shut down the local electricity supplier.
Members of the Ijaw Youths Council occupied the offices of the main power firm in the city of Yenagoa in Bayelsa state last month to demonstrate against continual outages.
The protest forced the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company to shut down operations and saw power cut off to the city of some 400,000 people and surrounding areas.
Oil-rich Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is plagued by widespread power outages that leave homes without electricity for long stretches and businesses unable to work.
The crippling power problems are seen as a major impediment to economic development in a country that has more people living in extreme poverty than anywhere else on the planet.
Queues snaked out of petrol stations in Yenagoa as local residents scrambled to buy fuel for generators.
The power company insisted it was struggling with a shortfall due to unpaid bills totaling some $45 million (40 million euros).
Nigeria has the potential to produce some 13,000 megawatts of power from its current infrastructure but on most days can only reach around 4,000 megawatts.
The central government has pledged to overhaul the electricity system and struck an agreement with German giant Siemens last year aimed at tripling reliable supplies by 2023.
For three decades, paleontologists the world over have been split over a provocative finding: Did a dwarf species of Tyrannosaurus rex really once exist?
In 1988, paleontologist Robert Bakker and his colleagues at the Cleveland (Ohio) Museum of Natural History reclassified a specimen first discovered in 1942 and displayed at the museum.
It was, they said, the first known member of a small new species they baptized as the Nanotyrannus.
Then, in 2001, another team discovered the nearly complete skeleton of a small Tyrannosaurus near the town of Ekalaka in Montana, in the rich and intensively studied fossil formation known as Hell Creek.
They named the creature — barely bigger than a draft horse — Jane and soon classified it as a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.
But a minority of specialists continued to insist that it was part of the newly classified Nanotyrannus species. They pointed to the morphology of its skull and bones, which they said differed from T-rex adults.
Answers in the bones
In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, researchers led by Holly Woodward of Oklahoma State University performed a microscopic analysis on samples from the interior of Jane’s tibia and femur bones, as well as from a less complete set of bones from an animal dubbed Petey.
This technique, known as paleohistology, confirmed that the two were immature individuals — not adults, the scientists said.
By extension, the study’s authors said, the existence of the Nanotyrannus seems very unlikely.
“The really cool thing about fossil bones is that a whole bone fossilizes even down to the microscopic size,” Woodward told AFP.
“We can infer growth rate, age (and) maturity level.”
The researchers took extremely fine slices from the bone samples — so thin that light could pass through them — and then studied them under powerful microscopes.
The size of the blood vessel openings revealed that the two dinosaurs were still in a phase of rapid growth at the time of death. Had they been adults, this vascularization would have been less prominent.
Only a half-dozen specimens
The team was also able to count the growth rings in each animal’s bones, much as one can do to determine the age of a tree: 13 years for Jane, and 15 for Petey.
The study adds to scientists’ still limited knowledge of the 20-year period between a dinosaur’s hatching and its adulthood.
Jane, who weighed only one ton, died before reaching the phase of exponentially rapid growth that normally would have brought her to an adult weight of just under 10 tons.
“Everyone loves T-rex, but we don’t really know much about how it grew up,” Woodward said. “It’s probably the most famous dinosaur in the world, and we mostly just have really large skeletons of it.”
That is partly due to the obsession of collectors and the public with finding and displaying the most enormous T-rex skeletons possible — unearthed sometimes to the detriment of smaller specimens.
Unfortunately, Woodward said, only five to seven fossils of young T-rex dinosaurs are known to exist in the world, and some of those are in private collections not accessible to researchers.
