The Uttarakhand floods reflected the damage we had dealt to the fragile Himalayan ecosystem. Five years later, we may are even closer to an irreversible catastrophe.
Tag: earthquake
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/i2yAKwn4wBk?rel=0 expand=1] 2017 In 2 Minutes, A Video Year In Review
The devastating earthquake in 1985 upended politics in Mexico. Could last month’s deadly disasters do the same?
VISSO — Francesco Sbaffi was recouping after a long day during a busy wine harvest when a powerful earthquake struck this idyllic town in the Apennine Mountains 11 months ago. The grape must was already fermenting in barrels at the Coppacchioli winery, where Sbaffi works as an oenologist, when the earthquake hit. As thousands of […]
-OpEd- In his account of the 1985 earthquake, which killed between 6,000 and 30,000 people (there are no precise figures) and destroyed more than 800 buildings in Mexico City, Carlos Monsiváis, one of the country’s greatest writers, described what he saw as the “emergence of civil society.” At the time, Monsiváis, who died in 2010, […]
Milenio Novedades, Sept. 20, 2017 For the second time is as many weeks, “Mexico Shakes,” as the front page of the Yucatán daily Milenio Novedades reports, following a 7.1-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday that toppled buildings and killed at least 216 people. Many more are missing. Victims include a group of children in Mexico City’s Coapa […]
-Essay- NORCIA — Every tragedy has its symbol, a photograph, often, that sticks in people’s minds and encapsulates with profound immediacy the raw experience at hand. Sunday’s earthquake in Central Italy is no exception. In the image, a few rays of sunlight illuminate a group of nuns and displaced elderly residents praying in the devastated […]
Categories
Toxic Air And 300 Million Kids
You’d want to be just about anywhere but the Indian capital of New Delhi today. Smog choked the city and triggered warnings that even healthy people were at risk of respiratory problems. Air pollution typically peaks in Delhi at this time of the year, driven in part by firecrackers burned to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu […]
LES CAYES — As you move through the Haitian cities that stood on Hurricane Matthew’s destructive path, a disturbing question strikes you: What was destroyed in the recent storm and what was damaged from before? You can see scrap metal and zinc sheets that were used as roofs. You can glimpse children bathing in and […]
Categories
Italy’s Perilous Fault Lines
As mourners gather today at a funeral for at least 200 of the 292 victims of the Aug. 24 quake in central Italy, the initial search for survivors has been replaced by the grim final task of recovering bodies and identifying the dead. As has happened in the wake of natural disasters in the past, […]
Foreign journalists have flocked to Amatrice after the Aug. 24 earthquake, focusing on the spaghetti all’amatriciana dish that the town was famous for. But this is no time for folklore.
Categories
Italy Quake, Once The Dust Has Settled
Two days after an earthquake tore through central Italy, the dust is settling on the razed buildings, and the hope of finding survivors in the rubble is fading away. The first burials of victims took place this morning, only hours after Prime Minister Matteo Renzi declared a state of emergency for the worst-hit areas and […]
La Repubblica, Aug.25 At least 247 people have died and 368 were injured in the devastating 6.2-magnitude earthquake that struck in the early hours of Wednesday. Small towns and villages were destroyed in the mountainous area where the regions of Umbria, Lazio and Le Marche meet in central Italy. The horror of the quake was […]
Categories
Hacking, From Submarines To A News Bureau
Although conventional warfare makes headlines, a more insidious conflict also warrants attention. Cyber warfare, in its many forms, is arguably still in its infancy. But the new-age combat is a growing concern — so much so that the latest NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, chose to focus on cyber defense. The list of government agencies, […]
Categories
Russian Doping, Tunisian Women, Free Coding
SPOTLIGHT: DOPING, FROM SOCHI TO RIO The terminology itself is telling: “State-sponsored doping” is the accusation that the The New York Times reports the U.S. Department of Justice is now pursuing against Russian athletes and officials, linked to the use of banned substances at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and other competitions. “The inquiry […]
Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, winner of the 2014 Pritzker, has used material like paper and cardboard to rebuild homes in disaster zones. The displaced of Ecuador await his singular eye.
CHINA AND RUSSIA TO U.S.: CAREFUL ON KOREA In a joint press brief today, China and Russia urged the U.S. not to put a new missile defense system on the Korean peninsula in response to recent North Korean muscle-flexing and weapons testing, Reuters reports. The U.S. and South Korea had opened talks on expanding defense […]
PURPLE PAIN Spontaneous gatherings and tributes continued into the early hours this morning after the sudden death of Prince, the American music icon and virtuoso instrumentalist behind “Kiss” and “Purple Rain.” His body was found yesterday at his home in the Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen. He was 57. Authorities are investigating the death, and an […]
CLINTON AND TRUMP WIN CRUCIAL NEW YORK VOTE Frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have moved significantly closer to winning their parties’ nomination after the two candidates clinched resounding victories in the New York primary. With final ballots tallied early Wednesday, Clinton got close to 58% of the vote in the Democratic race, while Trump […]
Categories
Japan Quake, UK Terror Arrests, 360 Videos
CLINTON-SANDERS DEBATE GETS FEISTY The gloves came off Thursday night in Brooklyn as Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders faced off in the last debate before New York’s crucial primary on Tuesday. Dan Balz of The Washington Post notes that the nature of the Democratic campaign now poses risks to whomever wins the […]
In L’Aquila, the new houses were supposed to withstand earthquakes, but “they didn’t even withstand the rain.” The grim reality from this central Italian city is laid out by La Stampa on Wednesday, the 7-year anniversary of the earthquake that killed more than 300 people and left nearly 40,000 without homes. The news now is […]
Categories
Long Before The Quake
Exactly seven years ago, a powerful earthquake killed hundreds and devastated parts of L’Aquila, in central Italy. And though the facade of the Santa Maria di Collemaggio remained intact, I feel lucky to have visited the basilica before the disaster: The cupola and several arches collapsed inside.
Five years since the devastating Japan earthquake prompted a tsunami that washed tons of refuse into the Pacific Ocean, ocean creatures in and around that underwater wreckage is burgeoning.
The earthquake and subequent nuclear diaster in Fukushima were no doubt devastating, but Japan still struggles to quantify the number of deaths linked to them.
Categories
February 27
SEVERAL KILLED IN GERMAN TRAIN CRASH At least eight people were killed and more than 150 injured this morning when two passenger trains collided near the southern German town of Bad Aibling, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. According to the train operator Meridian, both trains had partially derailed. Emergency teams reportedly freed all casualties by midday. “The […]
Categories
On This Day – January 24
Categories
On This Day – January 13
BEIJING — News of North Korea’s most recent atomic test, which Pyongyang is claiming was its first detonation of a hydrogen bomb, has sparked new fears about the future. But there is a more immediate concern: Neighboring South Korea and China are increasingly worried that the underground nuclear tests could set off the dormant volcano […]
[dailymotion //www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x3j5fyg expand=1]
Categories
On This Day – December 23
Categories
Miraculously Spared
The baroque Merced church is something of a curiosity in Antigua, Guatemala, a city famous for its ruins of colonial churches: It held up admirably well after a series of devastating earthquakes in the 18th and 19th centuries, after which the capital was moved from Antigua to its current location, Guatemala City.
SENDAI — Alcoholism and related problems are becoming serious in the three Tohoku prefectures severely affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011. The deaths of loved ones or the stress of a prolonged life as evacuees have led to increased alcohol consumption, and some are newly diagnosed as alcoholics even 4 1/2 […]
U.S. TO STEP UP ANTI-ISIS FIGHT The United States may soon dramatically escalate its military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said at a Senate hearing yesterday that the new policy could include more “strikes from the air or direct action on the ground,” The Washington Post reports. The recommendations […]
U.S. SHIP CHALLENGES DISPUTED CHINA SEA A U.S. Navy ship sailed close to artificial islands built by China in the disputed South China Sea waters early today, The Washington Post quoted a U.S. defense official as saying. The move is a direct challenge to China’s territorial claims to this area, which the U.S. considers international […]
EU, BALKANS NEGOTIATE REFUGEE PLAN Leaders agreed yesterday at a summit of eight EU countries along with Serbia, Macedonia and Albania to create 100,000 places for migrants in the Balkans and Greece as part of German-led efforts to find “a more reasonable way of dealing with the problem,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said. 500,000 Indonesia’s disaster […]
Chile was struck last month by an 8.6-magnitude earthquake that killed 13 people and forced thousands to evacuate their homes. The tremor, followed by a tsunami, was the most powerful recorded since the beginning of the year in the world’s most earthquake-prone country. But what was perhaps most notable was the contrast between the quake’s […]
BHAKTAPUR — With one arm, Rabindra Puri slowly clears a pile of rubble, followed by a second, and a third, until a statuette of the god Shiva appears. He delicately wipes the object’s dust-covered face, then puts it on a stretcher so that it can be carried away and placed in a locked cabin nearby. […]
Photo: Biblioteca Congreso Nacional de Chile SANTIAGO — If it’s a scrum Chilean Sen. Jorge Pizarro wanted, he certainly got one. Though he didn’t expect to be at the bottom of the heap. Constituents complained to La Tercera newspaper that Pizarro, leader of Chile’s Christian Democratic Party, traveled to the United Kingdom to watch rugby […]