US Large Air Tanker Crashes Fighting Fires In Australia

(Matt McDonald's articles from the MYGC on 23 January 2020.)

Three dead after large air tanker crashes while fighting NSW fires: Officials in New South Wales have confirmed three people are dead after a large air tanker crashed while fighting a blaze in the Snowy Mountains.

Contact with the C-130 Hercules was lost when the aircraft was near Cooma around 1.30pm before the plane disappeared off radar. A major search was launched with helicopters spotting the wreckage a couple of hours later. It’s understood the plane burst into flames upon impact with reports fire crews on the ground witnessed the crash.

New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons says there were no survivors from the crash. “It’s impacted heavily with the ground and initial reports are that there was a large fireball associated with the impact of the plane as it hit the ground,” Commissioner Fitzsimmons said.

China Locks Down Ten Cities As Death Toll Rises

(Staff article from the ABC NEWS on 23 January 2020.)

Coronavirus spreading with new cases reported around the world as death toll rises to 25: China has moved to lock down multiple cities with a combined population of more than 25 million people to halt the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus.

Health authorities in Hebei, just south of Beijing, said on Thursday an 80-year-old man infected with the coronavirus had died there, marking the first confirmed death outside Hubei. He died on Wednesday but was not confirmed to have been infected with the virus until Thursday. All of the deceased are said to have been elderly and beset with other chronic health issues.

Chinese authorities have locked down eight cities in Hubei province including Wuhan, Huanggang, Ezhou, Chibi, Qianjiang, Zhijiang, Jingmen and Xiantao. However, there are mixed reports on the number of cities with imposed travel bans, as the South China Morning Post reports eight cities are now subject to travel bans.

CoronaVirus Killing Many: Wu Han Locked Down

(Staff article from the ABC NEWS on 22 January 2020.)

Wuhan Hospitals are being overwhelmed by Coronavirus cases.

Coronavirus infections in China feared to be more widespread than officially reported, Wuhan closes transport networks: The Chinese city of Wuhan, the source of an outbreak of a new flu-like virus, is closing its transport networks and has advised citizens not to leave the city as the death toll rose steeply overnight.

Officials have confirmed 544 cases of the virus and 17 deaths and medical staff in Wuhan say they are overwhelmed with sick patients as one hospital alone is treating about 300 patients. Hospitals in Wuhan are reportedly dealing with huge numbers of sick patients, raising fears the new coronavirus is spreading faster than official reports suggest.

Bus, subway, ferry and long-distance passenger transportation networks will be suspended from 10am (local time), and the airport and train stations will be closed to outgoing passengers, state TV said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping Visits Myanmar

(Feliz Solomon's article from the WSJ on 18 January 2020.)

China’s President Xi Jinping visited Myanmar and made a push to rev up big infrastructure projects under his Belt and Road initiative, seeking to cement Beijing’s role as the country’s closest international partner while Western governments hold back over human-rights violations.

Mr. Xi’s two-day visit—the first by a Chinese head of state in almost two decades—comes as Myanmar is facing allegations at the International Court of Justice that its security forces committed genocide against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Last month, Washington imposed sanctions against four military officials, including the commander-in-chief.

China has backed Myanmar through the crisis and is now stepping up efforts to secure the strategically located nation as a major partner in the region. Mr. Xi held talks with Myanmar’s main civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in the country’s capital Naypyitaw on Saturday.

ICC's Fatou Bensouda: Accomplice To Rapes & Tortures

(Thierry Cruvellier's article from the JUSTICEINFO.NET on 11 July 2019.)

During her watch as Gambia's Chief Prosecutor thousands
were kidnapped, raped, and tortured in Gambia.
(She is now prosecuting Burma of Muslim genocide, WTF.)

Before speaking on behalf of the victims of serious crimes as prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda faithfully served, in the highest judicial offices, a military dictatorship in her country, the Gambia.

Two witnesses (themselves the victims of kidnap & torture during her watch as Gambia's Chief Prosecutor) have already publicly challenged her before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC). Will the Commission call the prosecutor to answer the charges? On the day of the inauguration of the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) in The Gambia, on 15 October 2018, Fatou Bensouda's speech seemed clear.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a Gambian national, first underlined how the work of this Commission – charged with shedding light on the military dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh, between July 1994 and January 2017, and the serious human rights violations committed under this regime – will be "so critical to the future of this country and to the strengthening of the rule of law on which this future can be secured."

Why Was Monsoon's Withdrawal Delayed In India?

(Staff article from the WEATHER CHANNEL on 07 October 2019.)

A few days ago, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said that the withdrawal of the southwest monsoon is expected to begin after October 10th.

This makes it the most delayed monsoon withdrawal of all time. The last time something similar occurred was in 1961, when the monsoon began withdrawing from October 1.

So why did the monsoon's retreat get so delayed and what does it mean for the upcoming Northeast Monsoon season, whose arrival is being eagerly awaited by Tamil Nadu and other states? The Weather Channel answers some common questions.

 The withdrawal of the monsoon begins with the development of a high-pressure area over northwest India. High-pressure zones represent settled weather and low wind movement, whereas intense low-pressure zones attract moisture-bearing winds and therefore host weather disturbances like rains, thunderstorms or lightning.

Late Monsoons In India: Wild Bush Fires In Australia

(Kevin Nguyen’s article from the ABC AUSTRALIA on 10 November 2019.)

Wild Fires in NSW partly caused by delayed monsoons in India, experts say: NSW's fire boss said the state had never seen anything like it before. And, a weather system thousands of kilometres away is at least partly responsible, experts say.

NSW's bushfire emergency began on Friday morning and escalated quickly — at its peak the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) issued emergency warnings for 17 separate blazes. Although emergency services were bracing for an intense fire season — which started earlier than predicted — a bushfire expert said climate change had created the "fairly extraordinary circumstances" seen this week.

Trent Penman is an associate professor at the University of Melbourne who studies the behaviour and formation of bushfires using real depictions of fuel, weather and topography. He said the bushfires could be partly explained by monsoon season ending late in India.

Dark Energy & Dark Matter In Our Universe: Heaven?

(Staff articles from the NASA USA.)

In the early 1990s, one thing was fairly certain about the expansion of the universe. It might have enough energy density to stop its expansion and recollapse, it might have so little energy density that it would never stop expanding, but gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time went on. Granted, the slowing had not been observed, but, theoretically, the universe had to slow. The universe is full of matter and the attractive force of gravity pulls all matter together.

Then came 1998 and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of very distant supernovae that showed that, a long time ago, the universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. So the expansion of the universe has not been slowing due to gravity, as everyone thought, it has been accelerating. No one expected this, no one knew how to explain it. But something was causing it.

Eventually theorists came up with three sorts of explanations. Maybe it was a result of a long-discarded version of Einstein's theory of gravity, one that contained what was called a "cosmological constant." Maybe there was some strange kind of energy-fluid that filled space. Maybe there is something wrong with Einstein's theory of gravity and a new theory could include some kind of field that creates this cosmic acceleration. Theorists still don't know what the correct explanation is, but they have given the solution a name. It is called dark energy.

Protesters In Iran Refusing To Trample US Flags

(John Hayward's article from the BREITBART NEWS on 13 January 2020.)

A video clip highlighted on Sunday by U.N. Watch, a non-governmental organization based in Switzerland, showed students at Iran’s Tehran University refusing to trample on American and Israeli flags as directed by agents of the Basij, a paramilitary force controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

UN Watch tweeted: "Students in Tehran University take pains to avoid walking on the flags of U.S. & Israel—as the regime forces people to do—and when two Basiji regime agents then make a point of trampling the flags, the crowds shout "Besharaf!" — the regime is shameless, dishonorable."

In the video, only a handful of Iranian regime agents were willing to walk on the flags. The students responded by heckling them as “dishonorable” and “shameless.” Other video clips of the incident illustrated how much care the students took to avoid stepping on the flags.