water
FILE PHOTO: Tiger Woods of the U.S. is congratulated by Jack Nicklaus (L) after his final round of the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, June 3, 2012. REUTERS/Matt Sullivan
April 26, 2019
By Rory Carroll
(Reuters) – Tiger Woods said Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championships is in his sights following his triumph at the Masters as he enjoys a career “extension” after a prolonged period of injury woes.
In his first comments since winning his 15th major title and fifth green jacket, the 43-year-old American said he always thought Nicklaus’s mark was reachable, provided his career was long enough.
“It took him an entire career to get to 18,” Woods said in an interview with streaming service GOLFTV.
“So now that I’ve had another extension to my career — one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago — if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility.”
“I’m never going to say it’s not, except for a couple of years ago when I couldn’t walk,” he said with a laugh.
“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”
Everything was going Woods’s way during his final round in Augusta, a win, he said, that had yet to sink in.
The former world number one was two shots behind the leading Francesco Molinari at the 12th at Augusta National when the British Open champion opened the door by finding water en route to a double-bogey.
“It went from a one-horse race with all of us kind of chasing Francesco, to now Pandora’s box is opened up playing 13, where … there’s at least seven with a legitimate chance to win the tournament with six holes to go.”
Woods birdied the next hole to grab the lead and held his nerve despite a logjam of contenders.
He will make his first start since the Masters at the May 2-5 Wells Fargo Championship in North Carolina where he will bid to match Sam Snead’s all-time record of 82 PGA Tour victories.
However, Woods said he was just happy to show his two children the positive side of a career that was derailed by personal problems and a litany of back injuries that convinced many the best golfer of his generation was done.
“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” he said.
“And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, and it feels good.”
(Reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles, Additional reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Ian Ransom)
Source: OANN
A member of the Libyan internationally recognised government forces fires during a fight with Eastern forces in Ain Zara, Tripoli, Libya April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Hani Amara
April 25, 2019
By Ahmed Elumami and Hani Amara
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – The United Nations on Thursday evacuated more than 350 migrants from a detention center in southern Tripoli where a fierce battle raged as fighters from rival Libyan camps traded rockets and artillery shells.
The Libyan National Army (LNA), led by commander Khalifa Haftar, which is allied to a rival government in eastern Libya, has mounted an offensive on Tripoli but has so far failed to breach the city’s southern defenses.
The group of migrants could be seen traveling on Thursday in buses to a detention center in Zawiya, a town 40 km (25 miles) west of the capital, bringing the total evacuated since Wednesday to around 675.
They came from a facility in the Qasr Ben Gashir district run by the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, an area that has become the main theater of fighting.
A Reuters reporter in the suburb of Ain Zara, also in southern Tripoli, saw heavy clashes, with both sides using artillery and anti-aircraft guns.
Forces loyal to the Tripoli government have managed to push back the LNA on some southern frontlines though the LNA was still fighting inside southern Tripoli. The Tripoli forces have gained ground in some parts of Ain Zara.
Gunfire rang through a narrow street packed with pickup trucks mounted with anti aircraft guns as fighters allied to Tripoli forces shouted: “Haftar, we are coming”.
One fighter from Zintan, a region west of the capital, was firing his anti-aircraft gun for several minutes. Later he was killed by an incoming rocket, his comrades told Reuters.
Two others from the same armed group died later as shelling from the battle in southern suburbs could be heard in central Tripoli late at night, witnesses said.
The LNA also still holds the forward base of Gharyan, a town 80 km (50 miles) south of Tripoli, which is difficult to take due to its mountainous location.
Hospitals are struggling with chronic shortages of medical supplies amid power outages and weakened water pumping stations, the aid agency said in a statement after three weeks of clashes.
“It is crucial that hospitals, medical facilities, health staff and vehicles transporting the wounded are allowed to carry out their activities safely,” said International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in a statement.
The World Health Organization said on Twitter that 278 people have been killed in the last three weeks, while 1,332 others have been wounded.
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by Ahmed Elumami and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Gareth Jones, Toby Chopra and James Dalgleish)
Source: OANN
A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Wattie
April 25, 2019
MONTREAL/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Rising waters are leading to further evacuations in central Canada, with the mayor of the country’s capital Ottawa declaring a state of emergency, and Quebec authorities warning that a hydroelectric dam was at risk of breaking.
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency for the city in response to rising water levels along the Ottawa River and weather forecasts that called for significant rainfall on Friday.
In a statement on Twitter, Watson asked for help from the Canadian province of Ontario and the country’s military.
He warned that “flood levels are currently forecasted to exceed the levels that caused significant damage to numerous properties in the city of Ottawa in 2017.”
Spring flooding has killed one person and forced more than 900 people from their homes in Canada’s Quebec province as of Thursday at 1 p.m., according to a government website.
Quebec’s Public Security Ministry warned on Thursday that the hydroelectric dam at Bell Falls on the Rouge River in the western part of the province was at risk of failure because of rising water levels.
Quebec’s provincial police said 250 people were protectively being removed from their homes as of late afternoon in case the dam breaks.
(Reporting by Allison Lampert and David Ljunggren; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Source: OANN
Particles traveling through empty space can emit bright flashes of gamma rays by interacting with the quantum vacuum, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Strathclyde.
It has long been known that charged particles, such as electrons and protons, produce the electromagnetic equivalent of a sonic boom when their speeds exceed that of photons in the surrounding medium. This effect, known as Cherenkov emission, is responsible for the characteristic blue glow from water in a nuclear reactor, and is used to detect particles at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
According to Einstein, nothing can travel faster than light in vacuum. Because of this, it is usually assumed that the Cherenkov emission cannot occur in vacuum. But according to quantum theory, the vacuum itself is packed full of “virtual particles,” which move momentarily in and out of existence.
These ghostly particles are usually not observable but, in the presence of extremely strong electric and magnetic fields, they can turn the vacuum into an optical medium where the speed of light is slowed down so that high velocity charged particles can emit Cherenkov gamma rays. This is totally unexpected in a vacuum.
Alex Jones breaks down what the globalists are keeping from humanity.
A group of Physics researchers at Strathclyde have found that in extreme conditions, such as found at the focus of the world’s most powerful lasers, and the huge magnetic fields around neutron stars, this ‘polarised’ vacuum can slow down gamma rays just enough for Cherenkov emission to occur. This means that the highest energy cosmic rays passing through the magnetic fields surrounding pulsars should predominantly emit Cherenkov radiation, vastly in excess of other types such as synchrotron radiation. The research has been published as an Editors’ Suggestion in Physical Review Letters. It formed part of the EPSRC funded Lab in a Bubble project led by Professor Dino Jaroszynski, to investigate a suite of fundamental phenomena occurring in laser-plasma interactions, with applications in industry, security and medicine.
Professor Jaroszynski said: “The Lab in a Bubble project is providing a unique opportunity to use high power lasers to advance both fundamental knowledge and advanced technology for the benefit of society. “This is a very exciting new prediction because it could provide answers to basic questions such as what is the origin of the gamma-ray glow at the center of galaxies? Also, it provides a new way of testing some of the most fundamental theories of science by pushing them to their limits.
“What is more, it will make a major contribution to the new High Field frontier of physics, made possible by the remarkable advances in laser technology which gained the award of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics.” Dr. Adam Noble, who conceived the idea and led the theoretical research effort, said: We take it for granted that nothing can come out of empty space consisting of pure vacuum. But this is not quite true; modern quantum physics says otherwise, and there are some intriguing surprises.
“There is a huge international effort to push forward the limits of laser technology. While this is driven by the many practical applications of high power lasers, its success will depend on understanding all the fundamental processes involved in laser-matter interactions. These results reveal a new aspect of these processes.”
Alexander Macleod, who also worked on the project as part of his Ph.D. project, said: “Quantum electrodynamics is one of the best-tested theories in physics, with extraordinary agreement between theoretical predictions and experimental data. But this agreement has only been verified in the weak-field regime. Vacuum Cherenkov radiation offers a new way to test whether it survives in the strong-field limit.”
Lab in a Bubble is a £4.5million Strathclyde-led, EPSRC-funded project for the production of bubble-sized ‘laboratories’ which could boost cancer treatment, medical imaging and industrial processes, in addition to enabling the investigation of fundamental physics problems.
Researchers in the international project aim to use high-powered lasers to conduct experiments in plasma bubbles so small that their diameters are equivalent to one-tenth of the cross-section of a human hair. Plasma forms 99.999% of visible matter in the universe.
Now that the Deep State coup has been exposed, insiders say President Trump is ready to use every tool he has to finally defeat the Deep State.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: The contents of grain silos which burst from flood damage are shown in Fremont County Iowa, U.S., March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Polansek
April 25, 2019
By Karl Plume
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Farm supplier CHS Inc has dozens of loaded barges trapped on the flood-swollen Mississippi River near St. Louis – about 500 miles from the company’s two Minnesota distribution hubs.
The barges can’t move – or get crucial nutrients to corn farmers for the spring planting season – because river locks on the main U.S. artery for grain and fertilizer have been shuttered for weeks. High water presents a hazard for boats, barges and lock equipment.
Railroads have also been plagued by delays from winter weather and flooding in the western Midwest, further disrupting agricultural supply chains in the nation’s bread basket.
The transportation woes are the latest headache for a U.S. agricultural sector reeling from years of slumping profits and the U.S.-China trade war, and they threaten to cut the number of acres of corn and wheat that can be planted this year.
The shipping delays follow months of bad weather in the rural Midwest, including a “bomb cyclone” that flooded at least 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of farmland last month and a record-breaking April snow storm.
“Our barges are a long way from where we need them in the upper Midwest,” said Gary Halvorson, senior vice president of agronomy at CHS. “We really don’t think that any rail line will be at their preferred service rate until summer.”
Agricultural retailers rely on barges and trains to resupply distribution warehouses across the farm belt. But river flooding has delayed the seasonal reopening of the northern reaches of the Mississippi River to barge traffic. The latest National Weather Service river forecasts suggest one of the river’s southernmost locks could remain closed until at least the first week of May.
FALLING PROFITS, PRODUCTION
Reduced or poorly timed fertilizer applications can hurt yields, potentially denting this year’s U.S. farm profits, which are already predicted to be about half of their 2013 peak, according to the latest U.S. government forecast. Delayed shipments can also mean lost sales for farm suppliers and higher demurrage penalties, or late-return charges, on stalled barges and rail cars.
CHS, one of the largest publicly traded U.S. agriculture suppliers, said this month cited poor weather as a key reason for a $8.9 million drop in agricultural profits during its fiscal second quarter.
Agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland Co said severe weather and flooding would cut its first-quarter profit by $50 million to $60 million while DowDuPont said flooding would slash first-quarter profits in its agriculture division by 25 percent.
Fertilizer producers such as Nutrien Ltd, Mosaic Co and Yara International also lost sales due to bad weather in the fourth quarter of last year and first quarter of this year. Mosaic announced last month that it would cut U.S. phosphate fertilizer production by 300,000 tonnes for the spring season due to poor weather and large inventories left over from the fall.
Farm retailers such as CHS and privately held Growmark may see additional losses through the spring season as the tighter planting window limits the application services they provide, according to CoBank analyst Will Secor.
SCRAMBLING TO PROTECT CROP YIELDS
Farmers are not expected to skip nitrogen fertilizer applications entirely, which would cause yields to drop by about half, according to Purdue University agronomist Bob Nielsen. But higher nutrient costs could have growers applying less-than-optimal amounts.
Some farmers could shift from corn to soybeans, which can be planted later and require fewer fertilizer applications. But soybeans will continue to face uncertain demand as long as the U.S. and top buyer China remain locked in a trade war.
“Right now my plan is to plant more corn because the price of beans is so low,” said Don Batie, a farmer near Lexington, Nebraska.
The weather problems started last autumn, a period when some farmers treat fields after harvesting in preparation for the following spring. But wet weather prevented fall fertilizer applications, and an exceptionally snowy winter in many areas slowed or halted winter field work.
More recent storms have threatened to narrow the limited spring window for field treatments.
“When you add to it this re-supply constraint of not being able to move barges up the Mississippi, it puts us in a precarious position,” said Kreg Ruhl, manager for crop nutrients division at Growmark, the country’s third-largest agriculture retailer in terms of revenue.
PRICES RISING
Retail fertilizer prices have started rising in parts of the Midwest and are likely to rise further as local supplies are depleted and retailers scramble to resupply.
In Iowa, the top U.S. corn producing state, the price of the common fertilizer urea was up 20 percent in late April from a year ago, and anhydrous ammonia was up 27 percent. Both hit their highest early spring levels in three years, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
Without timely barge deliveries, CHS will lean on its rail network that brings imported supplies from Galveston, Texas, to any of the 29 rail hubs it owns in places like Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Marshall, Minnesota; and Minot, North Dakota.
Higher U.S. fertilizer prices and strong demand from other countries could help producers such as Nutrien, Mosaic and Yara recover some recent profit weakness in upcoming quarters.
For farmers and fertilizer retailers, however, uncertain fertilizer deliveries will likely weigh on agricultural markets through the planting season.
“We’re doing our very best to make sure that our retail network is supplied,” said CHS’s Halvorson.
(Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago Editing by Brian Thevenot and Caroline Stauffer)
Source: OANN
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves towards his supporters during a roadshow in Varanasi, India, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
April 25, 2019
By Devjyot Ghoshal
VARANASI, India (Reuters) – Prime Minister Narendra Modi staged a show of strength on Thursday in his home city of Varanasi, one of the most sacred places for India’s majority Hindu population, as the country’s 39-day staggered general election neared its mid-point.
Dotted with ancient temples and sitting on the banks of the Ganges river, Varanasi was one of two seats that Modi fought and won at the last election in 2014. He has so far chosen to represent Varanasi in parliament and is not likely to pursue any other seat.
Surrounded by tens of thousands of supporters, Modi, who is seeking a second term as premier, bowed to the crowd with folded hands from an elevated podium.
He then toured the city in an SUV, standing to greet supporters through the sunroof. His security forces prevented the crowd from getting too close even as the vehicle moved slowly through the narrow alleys.
Modi was accompanied by senior BJP leaders, including the party President Amit Shah and Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, where Varanasi is located. The northern state is India’s most populous and has the largest number of MPs. In 2014, the BJP won 71 seats there out of 80.
Modi is expected to file his nomination papers on Friday.
India’s election is being held over 39 days from April 11 to May 19, with votes due to be counted on May 23. Varanasi will vote on the last day.
Modi’s supporters talked up his achievements in bringing clean water, sanitation and electricity to more of India.
“The city has become clean. There is electricity 24 hours now, and there is water,” said 55-year-old Shyam Narayan Naik.
“No other party will be able to win here,” added Narayan, who runs a textile shop in the city that was shut on Thursday as Modi’s 5 kilometer-long roadshow passed by.
“NAMO AGAIN”
The city was decorated with BJP flags and saffron-colored balloons. Sounds of drums and songs praising Modi grew louder as the prime minister arrived.
Supporters wore “Namo Again” t-shirts or masks with Modi’s photograph, while others dressed as Hindu gods and goddesses.
“I think this time he’s trying to send the signal that he’s now far more confident, he doesn’t need the Gujarat seat and therefore he’s standing only from UP,” said Sudha Pai, referring to the other seat Modi won and gave up in 2014. Pai, a former political science professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, closely tracks politics in Uttar Pradesh.
But weak jobs growth, distressed farm incomes because of low crop prices, and charges of economic mismanagement have boosted the opposition. And in Uttar Pradesh, two formidable regional parties have allied to take on the BJP.
Modi often refers to “Mother Ganga” in his speeches, and his government has committed nearly $3 billion of funds to a five-year clean-up of the heavily polluted sacred river.
That program is due to be completed in 2020.
But last year, Reuters found that only a tenth of the funds had been used in the first two years of the project.
“It is what it was before. Nothing has changed. People are just using Modi to make money themselves,” said 70-year old Ramji, referring to the money spent on cleaning the Ganges.
(Editing by Martin Howell and Catherine Evans)
Source: OANN
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi reacts during a roadshow in Varanasi, India, April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
April 25, 2019
By Rajendra Jadhav
NASHIK, India (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party and a Hindu nationalist ally face a big electoral challenge in the critical western state of Maharashtra where rural distress, unemployment and drought may hurt Modi’s bid for a second term.
Strategists already expect Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to lose ground in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh in the north, as voting is underway in a general election that began on April 11 and ends on May 19.
That coupled with possible losses in Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital, Mumbai, and the second most seats in parliament after Uttar Pradesh, would make it harder for the BJP-led coalition to win a governing majority, they say.
The BJP and its regional ally, Shiv Sena, won 41 of 48 seats in Maharashtra in the 2014 election. There are 545 seats in the lower house of parliament.
How rural India votes will largely determine the outcome. Nearly two-thirds of its 1.3 billion people live in the towns and villages in the countryside.
Only a few weeks ago, Modi appeared to have turned back the opposition tide in Maharashtra with his tough line on Pakistan after Islamist militants based there killed 40 Indian police in a suicide attack in the disputed Kashmir region.
Modi ordered an air strike on a suspected militant camp in Pakistan, and doubled down on security as a campaign issue.
“In March, it looked like the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra had an edge due to the air strikes,” said Pratap Asbe, a political commentator based in Mumbai.
“But in the past few weeks the opposition has seized on issues such as unemployment and lower crop prices that have hurt voters,” he said.
FARM SUICIDES
Reuters interviewed 148 farmers from 11 districts in the state in March and April, and nearly two-thirds said their incomes had fallen and they blamed the government for not doing enough to support crop prices.
The BJP-led state government’s slow response to the farm crisis has inflamed the anti-incumbency mood ahead of a state election due by October, Abse said.
Protests by farmers in the state have grown in the last two years as crop prices plunged, while some gave up hope.
There were 3,661 farm suicides in Maharashtra in 2016, nearly a third of the national toll that year, according to government data. Recent numbers are not available.
The farm crisis is acutely felt in the sugar industry.
Sugar mills in the state, India’s second-biggest producer of sugar, cotton and soybeans, have run up a record $614.8 million in arrears to cane farmers due to poor sales amid a sugar glut.
“Sugar mills are not paying government-mandated prices for cane and have also been delaying payments for months,” said Madhav Pawase, a farmer in Nashik district, nearly 175 km (110 miles) north of Mumbai.
Modi’s administration has done little to ensure mills pay the right price to farmers on time, added Pawase, who voted for Shiv Sena in the 2014 election.
Poor rains have added to farmers’ woes. Rainfall in the state was 23 percent below normal in 2018, wilting crops and causing water shortages.
Farmers say the government is reluctant to open cattle shelters where livestock can get free water and fodder.
The lack of jobs is also major issue for voters in Maharashtra, where competition for government positions has fueled community tensions.
The state’s dominant Maratha community has organized protests and shutdowns, including marches to Mumbai in recent years, to demand that government posts are reserved for them.
“There are no jobs today. We want a government that will create jobs,” said Akash Phalke, a mechanical engineer who has spent the past two years looking for a job.
INFIGHTING
Shiv Sena is one of the BJP’s oldest allies, but they have long squabbled over how to share power. Shiv Sena had said it would contest this general election alone, but agreed just before the polls to another tie up with the BJP.
However, it’s not clear if BJP and Shiv Sena cadres have embraced the renewed alliance on the campaign trail, said Sunil Chawake, a senior assistant editor at the Maharashtra Times newspaper.
“The lower level workers of both parties have grudges against each other and don’t work together cohesively,” he said.
The partnership between the opposition Congress party and its Maharashtra ally, the Nationalist Congress Party, is more watertight, Chawake said.
The opposition also got a boost when a regional party, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, decided to sit out the general election and its leader Raj Thackeray began campaigning against the BJP.
“Thackeray has been propelling the winning chances of the opposition in Mumbai and the adjourning areas,” said Asbe.
(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Martin Howell and Darren Schuettler)
Source: OANN
A girl carries a stack of bread on her head as she walks near rubble of damaged buildings in Aleppo’s Kalasa district, Syria April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
April 25, 2019
By Angus McDowall
ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) – The bodies of three-year-old Malak Kasas and two neighbors still lie under a pile of rubble in Aleppo’s Kalasa district more than two years after the Syrian government recaptured the area.
Malak’s grandfather, Omar, and uncle, Mahmoud, live in the building opposite. When they stand on the balcony, they see the collapsed building that is her tomb. Whenever Omar says her name he bursts into silent, convulsive, sobs.
The state’s failure to pull bodies from the rubble of east Aleppo points to the grim prospects for an area that, like many others in Syria, was held by rebel forces for much of the country’s eight-year-old conflict. The western part of the city has remained in government hands throughout the fighting.
The opposition has accused President Bashar al-Assad of withholding services from districts where the rebellion against him flared to punish residents, and in Kalasa there was little evidence of a big government effort to improve conditions.
The government blames the slow recovery, shortages and hardship on the war and Western sanctions. It has denied treating recaptured areas differently to ones that remained under its control throughout the war and has said it is working to restore normal services to all areas.
The conflict that has killed half a million people and displaced half of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million continues, and Reuters could hear bombardments over several nights in Aleppo from a nearby frontline during a recent visit.
In Kalasa, recaptured in late 2016, there is no systematic reconstruction of residential areas. State services are minimal. Work to renovate war-damaged buildings is almost entirely done and paid for by local people, residents say.
Kalasa has no state electricity supply, charities dole out boxes of food aid to crowds waiting behind chains. As elsewhere in Syria, fuel shortages cause long lines at petrol stations and people rely on firewood for heat.
Some damaged buildings in Kalasa have recently collapsed, falling debris killed a man last year and the many large heaps of rubble in areas where children play in the street are covered in stinking rubbish, dead rats and swarming flies.
Kalasa’s situation is not unusual for east Aleppo – other districts toured by Reuters showed equally bad or worse conditions. The western part of the city has suffered less damage because the rebels had no air power.
In other cities, there also are no reports of widespread rebuilding or data to suggest it has started.
Ayad Batash, 35, a former soldier and builder who was optimistic about life in Kalasa when Reuters met him two years ago, said things had become much worse for his family with a fuel shortage and a lack of work.
“This year’s not like before. This year is worse. The economic situation is worse than before,” he said.
Two years ago, he had regular work and thought the electricity supply would soon resume. He expected to move back into his own apartment and thought his neighbors would return from life as refugees.
“If the situation continues like this, people won’t come back,” he said.
RUBBLE
Reuters journalists spent several days reporting in a small neighborhood of Kalasa that they also visited in 2017 after the government retook the area, interviewing dozens of residents including several they had met previously.
A government official accompanied Reuters at all times in Kalasa. Local people criticized the rebels that held the area from 2012 until 2016 but not Assad or his government.
The recapture of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, was a turning point in the war. In just one city center square, Reuters counted 18 posters of Assad.
Some things have improved since Reuters last visited this district two years ago. There is now piped water and some rubble, and debris blocking streets and alleys has been cleared.
More schools have opened, though they are crowded, and more government-subsidized bakeries operate in the area, though queues for bread are long.
Those considerations are scant comfort to the people of Kalasa. Omar Kasas no longer leaves his flat. He remembers the bombardment in September 2016 that killed his daughter Iman and her daughters Ayah, Mayas and Malak in the building opposite.
People dug out the bodies of Iman, Ayah and Mayas, and nine dead neighbors, but could not reach Malak or two other women. Since the government took the area, there has been no effort to shift the rubble or find the bodies, residents said.
FUEL SHORTAGES
For Ayad Batash, a government supporter with two brothers in the army, the fuel shortages have aggravated other problems. During a cold winter, his four children, aged between two and 10, had no way to keep warm but with blankets.
A neighbor, retired school worker Ahmad Zarka, 73, kept a stove going to keep warm. The black smoke that pours out of it has turned his white songbirds in a cage on the wall a sooty grey. Rationed gas supplies were not adequate, he said.
The Western districts of Aleppo receive state power supplies for several hours a day. In Kalasa the only source of power is private generators that run on rationed diesel fuel.
Snack bar owner Rabiah al-Najar said the cost of electricity for selling sandwich wraps ate up nearly half his weekly profits.
Batash blames the lack of electricity for the lack of work. Using diesel-powered generators during a fuel shortage can double the cost of a job renovating a damaged apartment, he said. “So the customer just delays the work,” he said.
Opposite a petrol station near Kalaseh, where 80 cars were lined two-deep along the road waiting for rationed fuel, men sat on the curb, their tools lying on upturned concrete blocks to advertise their services as laborers.
“We wait from 7.30 a.m. until about 1 p.m. Then we go home and there’s nothing to do until the next day,” said Mohammed Ahmedi, 53, one of three sitting together, smoking as they waited for a job. They had not worked in 10 days, he said.
FOOD QUEUES
Batash has also had little work over the winter, he said. He considered moving but believes things are little better elsewhere.
Every few weeks his family joins the crowd waiting behind a chain strung across a nearby alleyway to receive food aid from the World Food Program and a local charity.
Men and women queue separately, each clutching their green ration card, waiting for their number to be called to collect a cardboard box with salt, chickpeas, lentils, bulgur wheat, sugar, rice and cooking oil.
There are queues even for bread. At a Kalasa bakery, people had to wait more than half an hour to receive their flat loaves.
There is no official rationing for bread but the baker, Hamid Atiq, said he limited what he sold each person because he did not have enough flour or fuel to power his oven long enough to supply all that the neighborhood wanted.
His bakery is wedged between the rubble of several bomb sites, and a dead rat lay on the ground nearby as a crowd gathered round the service window jostling to be served.
On the other side of the main road is an area of ramshackle older houses of two or three storeys. Mohammed Ramadan Daha, 61, is frightened to sleep in his house there.
The house behind his collapsed recently. The one next door has a large crack running up the side. He fears his will collapse too.
“It’s terrifying,” Daha said.
(Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Source: OANN
Security forces stand guard at St. Antony shrine, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
April 25, 2019
By Alasdair Pal and Sunil Kataria
NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – As mourners buried the remains of Christian worshippers killed by the Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, hundreds of Muslim refugees fled Negombo on the country’s west coast where communal tensions have flared in recent days.
At least 359 people perished in the coordinated series of blasts targeting churches and hotels. Church leaders believe the final toll from the attack on St Sebastian’s Church in Negombo could be close to 200, almost certainly making Negombo the deadliest of the six near-simultaneous attacks.
On Wednesday, hundreds of Pakistani Muslims fled the multi-ethnic port an hour north of the capital, Colombo. Crammed into buses organized by community leaders and police, they left fearing for their safety after threats of revenge from locals.
“Because of the bomb blasts and explosions that have taken place here, the local Sri Lankan people have attacked our houses,” Adnan Ali, a Pakistani Muslim, told Reuters as he prepared to board a bus. “Right now we don’t know where we will go.”
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks, yet despite Islamic State being a Sunni jihadist group, many of the Muslims fleeing Negombo belong to the Ahmadi community, who had been hounded out of Pakistan years ago after their sect was declared non-Muslim.
The fallout from Sunday’s attacks appears set to render them homeless once more.
Farah Jameel, a Pakistani Ahmadi, said she had been thrown out of her house by her landlord.
“She said ‘get out of here and go wherever you want to go, but don’t live here’,” she told Reuters, gathered with many others at the Ahmadiyya Mosque, waiting for buses to take them to a safe location.
“I HAVE NOTHING NOW”
Sri Lanka’s government is in disarray over the failure to prevent the attacks, despite repeated warnings from intelligence sources.
Police have detained an unspecified number of people were detained in western Sri Lanka, the scene of anti-Muslim riots in 2014, in the wake of the attacks, and raids were carried out in neighborhoods around St Sebastian’s Church.
Police played down the threats to the refugees, but said they have been inundated with calls from locals casting suspicion on Pakistanis in Negombo.
“We have to search houses if people suspect,” said Herath BSS Sisila Kumara, the officer in charge at Katara police station, where 35 of the Pakistanis that gathered at the mosque were taken into police custody for their own protection, before being sent to an undisclosed location.
“All the Pakistanis have been sent to safe houses,” he said. “Only they will decide when they come back.”
Two kilometers away, makeshift wooden crosses marked the new graves at the sandy cemetery of St Sebastian’s Church, as the latest funerals on Wednesday took the number buried there to 40.
Channa Repunjaya, 49, was at home when he heard about the blast at St Sebastian’s. His wife, Chandralata Dassanaike and nine-year-old daughter Meeranhi both died.
“I felt like committing suicide when I heard that they had died,” he told Reuters by the open graves. “I have nothing now.”
Meeranhi’s grandmother, with her head still bandaged after being wounded in the attack, was held by a relative as the first handfuls of earth were scattered upon her child-sized coffin.
Most of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people are Buddhist, but the Indian Ocean island’s population includes Muslim, Hindu and Christian minorities. Until now, Christians had largely managed to avoid the worst of the island’s conflict and communal tensions.
There were signs of some religious communities pulling together following Sunday’s outrage.
Saffron- and scarlet-robed Buddhist monks from a nearby monastery handed out bottled water to mourners who gathered under a baking afternoon sun.
But the town, which has a long history of sheltering refugees – including those made homeless by a devastating tsunami in 2004 – may struggle to recover from Sunday’s violence, said Father Jude Thomas, one of dozens of Catholic priests who attended Wednesday’s burials.
“Muslims and Catholics lived side by side,” he said. “It was always a peaceful area, but now things have come to the surface we cannot control.”
(Editing by John Chalmers & Simon Cameron-Moore)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO : (L to R) Japan’s Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko, Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako attend an autumn garden party at Akasaka Palace Imperial garden in Tokyo, Japan November 9, 2018. Kazuhiro Nogi/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
April 24, 2019
By Elaine Lies
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife, Masako, represent a lot of firsts for an imperial couple: university-educated, multilingual and with years of experience living overseas, during which Naruhito even did his own laundry.
As they prepare to carve out identities as Japan’s emperor and empress, hopes are high they will make the office both more international and more in touch with the lives of ordinary Japanese.
“I think there’s opportunities for this newest generation of imperial family members to embrace causes that push the envelope a little,” said Shihoko Goto, an analyst at the Wilson Center, citing the 55-year-old Masako’s experience as a diplomat.
“They have a unique background and they have the interest, I believe, and they should have the skill sets to be more engaged,” she added, noting how far the family has come from World War Two, when Emperor Hirohito was considered a god.
Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko reached out to ordinary people, especially to comfort them after disasters. Akihito’s abdication, the first in nearly 200 years, sparked discussion about whether that was the correct way to approach the role.
“There were clearly two views. One, that, like Akihito, the emperor must be active and interact with people, and the other, that all he needs to do is pray,” said an ex-royal household agency official. “But considering the future, I don’t think we have both options. An emperor who simply exists would not gain the trust and empathy of the people.”
Though Naruhito, 59, intends to carry on his parents’ work, he also says the monarchy needs to adapt. Observers said that could mean speaking up and reaching out more, leveraging the family’s value as part of Japan’s identity.
“Given these times, the imperial family should use things like social networking to express their opinions to a certain degree,” said Rika Kayama, a psychiatrist and author of a book on the imperial women.
“If not words, then photos on Instagram,” she added, noting Naruhito has posed for selfies with bystanders overseas and Masako in particular may have things she wants to express.
Masako’s long struggle with what palace officials term an “adjustment disorder” is on everybody’s mind, especially because it kept her out of the public eye for roughly a decade. By contrast, Michiko is often termed “flawless” in her dedication.
“When Masako visits disaster victims, they’ll feel she’s gone through hard times, like them,” said Hideya Kawanishi, assistant history professor at Nagoya University. “More than the sense of gratitude they have with Empress Michiko, it’ll be a sense of empathy. She’ll seem closer.”
Masako’s frequent expressions in birthday messages of concern for impoverished or troubled children suggest those are likely to be causes she will pursue.
Naruhito, who studied medieval river transport, is interested in water issues and conservation, and has hinted he may take up climate change as well.
“It plays to his interests, also the national interest, and a cross-border interest too. There are many issues like that … they have a unique platform they could really use,” Goto said.
“Things like the environment, or reaching across borders for greater understanding and dialogue at a time when the world is becoming myopic and insular.”
Patience will be needed in change-averse Japan, however.
“Even the current emperor and empress came in for lots of criticism at the start – for example, when Michiko got on her knees to console people and took their hands, she was criticized for ‘damaging the authority of the Emperor,’” Kawanishi said.
“So they’ll move gradually to put their imprint on things. They’ll change something, wait, then change again.”
(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
Source: OANN
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