“World Events, Politics & News” 2

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go australia go australia 🦘 🦘
 
serious for a moment please 🙏🏼 time for some of those thoughts and prayers fr

laat night at around 6pm local time the mother of a 10 year old girl very close to where i live slit her daughters throat.

still only finding out by the chinese community where i live. they r friends of friends and this is so very sad to hear. i dont pray very much but i pray to any good entity out there in the universe that sophies dad is ok aftter finding his daughter like he did. i pray whatever horrible thing that makes a mum do this to her own kid is fixed or replace the negative chi with positive.

我的哀悼王先生 💔
 
serious for a moment please 🙏🏼 time for some of those thoughts and prayers fr

laat night at around 6pm local time the mother of a 10 year old girl very close to where i live slit her daughters throat.

still only finding out by the chinese community where i live. they r friends of friends and this is so very sad to hear. i dont pray very much but i pray to any good entity out there in the universe that sophies dad is ok aftter finding his daughter like he did. i pray whatever horrible thing that makes a mum do this to her own kid is fixed or replace the negative chi with positive.

我的哀悼王先生 💔
You’re kinder than me. I would like to think this child survived this but such a barbaric act, I’m inclined to think not. 😔
 
You’re kinder than me. I would like to think this child survived this but such a barbaric act, I’m inclined to think not. 😔
we were right. she was off her meds and started saying her daughter was possessed by satan and was telling her to do bad things.

they said the cry of her dad when he found her was bone chilling and heart breaking💔

i knew about the family but didnt know them myself just thru friends and her school is close to mine. the whole chinese community here is just shook up.
 
As courts across England continue to deal with the onslaught of cases related to recent disorder in the UK, here's a rundown of various charges and sentences that've come through today:

A short while ago, two men were jailed for their roles in what a judge called "12 hours of racist, hate-fuelled mob violence" in Hull

John Honey, 25, was given four years and eight months, and 48-year-old David Wilkinson six years - the longest sentences to be handed out since the violence that erupted following a stabbing attack in Southport last month

The first adult in England was charged earlier with the more serious offence of riot, while further violent disorder sentences have been handed out in Bristol, Sheffield, Sunderland, Blackpool, Liverpool and Plymouth

Roger Haywood, who a judge earlier said played a "leading" role in the Blackpool disorder, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison

New Ministry of Justice data shows 460 have so far been arrested in connection with the unrest - and at least 99 have been sentenced

Meanwhile, the National Police Chiefs' Council gave us an update earlier to say 277 police officers have been injured responding to the unrest
 
A cluster of Scottish islands could help solve one of our planet's greatest mysteries, scientists say.

The Garvellach islands off the west coast of Scotland are the best record of Earth entering its biggest ever ice age around 720 million years ago, researchers have discovered.
The big freeze, which covered nearly all the globe in two phases for 80 million years, is known as "Snowball Earth", after which the first animal life emerged.

Clues hidden in rocks about the freeze have been wiped out everywhere - except in the Garvellachs. Researchers hope the islands will tell us why Earth went into such an extreme icy state for so long and why it was necessary for complex life to emerge.


Layers of rock can be thought of as pages of a history book – with each layer containing details of the Earth’s condition in the distant past.

But the critical period leading up to Snowball Earth was thought to be missing because the rock layers were eroded by the big freeze.
Now a new study by researchers at University College, London, has revealed that the Garvellachs somehow escaped unscathed. It may be the only place on Earth to have a detailed record of how the Earth entered one of the most catastrophic periods in its history – as well as what happened when the first animal life emerged when the snowball thawed hundreds of millions of years ago.

Back then Scotland was in a completely different place because the continents have moved over time. It was south of the Earth’s equator and had a tropical climate, until it and the rest of the planet became engulfed in ice.

“We capture that moment of entering an ice age in Scotland that is missing in all other localities in the world,” Prof Graham Shields of University College London, who led the research, told BBC News.

“Millions of critical years are missing in other places because of glacial erosion – but it is all there in the layers of rock in the Garvellachs.”
The islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland are uninhabited, apart from a team of scientists working out of the main island's solitary building, although there are also the ruins of a 6th Century Celtic monastery.

The breakthrough was made by Prof Shield’s PhD student, Elias Rugen, whose results have been published in the Journal of the Geological Society of London. Elias is the first to date the rock layers and identify them as from the critical period that is missing from all other rock formations in all other parts of the world.

His discovery puts the Garvellachs in line for one of the biggest accolades in science: the golden spike hammered in at locations identified as the best record of planet-changing geological moments – though to ward off thieves the spike is not actually made of gold.

Elias has taken many of the judges of the golden spike, formally known as members of the “Cryogenian sub-commission”, several times to the rock faces to press his case.

The next stage is to allow the wider geological community to voice any objections or to come up with a better candidate. If there are none, then the spike could be hammered in next year.

The prize would raise the scientific profile of the location and attract further research funding.

If it does earn the prize it would delight the man who first identified the significance of the formation as a young researcher 60 years ago, Dr Tony Spencer.

“There are about fifty places in where we could choose for this golden spike,"he told BBC News, "but this is the one where the rocks are thickest and the sedimentation is the most continuous.

"So it appears to preserve the very earliest point in time when there is a record of this particular ice age.”
 
TIME and TIME for Kids revealed the 2024 Kid of the Year, recognizing one exceptional young person—and five honorees—giving hope for the future.

This year’s recipient is 15-year-old scientist - Heman Bekele - from Fairfax, Virginia. He is recognized for developing an affordable compound-based bar of soap that could in the future be a new and more accessible way to deliver medication to treat skin cancers, including melanoma.

🖕Cancer!
 

Extreme misogyny will be treated as a form of extremism in the UK under new government plans, the Home Office has said.


Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has ordered a review of the UK's counter-extremism strategy to determine how best to tackle threats posed by harmful ideologies.
The analysis will look at hatred of women as one of the ideological trends that the government says is gaining traction.

Ms Cooper said there has been a rise in extremism "both online and on our streets" that "frays the very fabric of our communities and our democracy".

The review will look at the rise of Islamist and far-right extremism in the UK, as well as wider ideological trends, including extreme misogyny or beliefs which fit into broader categories, such as violence.

It will also look at the causes and conduct of the radicalisation of young people.

Ms Cooper said the strategy will "map and monitor extremist trends" to work out how to disrupt and divert people away from them.
It will also "identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence", she said.
 
Dozens of workers from around the world may have been trafficked into the UK to work for a small family-owned Scottish fishing firm, a BBC investigation has revealed.

Thirty-five men from the Philippines, Ghana, India and Sri Lanka were recognised as victims of modern slavery by the Home Office after being referred to it between 2012 and 2020.

The workers were employed by TN Trawlers and its sister companies, owned by the Nicholson family, based in the small town of Annan on the southern coast of Scotland.

The TN Group denied any allegation of modern slavery or human trafficking and said its workers were well treated and well paid.
The company was the focus of two long-running criminal investigations but no cases of human trafficking or modern slavery have come to trial, although some of the men waited years to give evidence.

While TN Trawlers’ lead director, Thomas Nicholson, was under active investigation, TN Group companies continued recruiting new employees from across the world.

Experienced fisherman Joel Quince was 28 when he landed at Heathrow Airport in 2012, thrilled to have secured a job as a deckhand with TN trawlers.

Joel had a young family back home in the Philippines, thousands of miles away. He had been expecting to earn a good income working in the UK. He was to be paid $1,012 (£660) a month for a 48-hour week.

He caught a bus from London to Carlisle, where, he says, he was picked up by the owner’s son, Tom Nicholson Jr.

“On our way to go to the boat he told us: 'You have to give me your documents' - so without hesitation I gave all my documents to them,” he said.

Joel says he was then taken straight to the fishing ground to start working.

But he was surprised to find that his boat was the Philomena rather than the Mattanja, which was the only vessel he was authorised to work on under the terms of his visa. “This was already something fishy for me,” he said

He claims that instead of the 48-hour week he had been told about, he was working 18 hours a day, seven days a week while the Philomena was out fishing.

On his monthly wage of £660, it meant Joel was earning less than the UK minimum wage – although at that time there was no legal requirement to pay it to fishermen like him.


Joel was one of about 30 seafarers who arrived in the UK to join TN Trawlers between 2011 and 2013, mostly from the Philippines. They joined dredgers trawling for scallops along the UK coastline.

These dredgers, built in the 1970s and 80s, work by towing metal nets along the seabed. They scrape up shellfish, as well as stones and bycatch – the other marine life which gets caught in the nets. Deckhands throw back the stones and pack the scallops in ice below deck.

Several of the men the BBC spoke to had little or no fishing experience. All describe working shift patterns as gruelling as Joel’s or worse.

Joel said he struggled to get up to go to work because he was so exhausted – but he didn’t complain because his colleagues were also suffering.

“If I stop working, there’s three people suffering, not getting their rest, because the operation keeps continuing. They won’t stop.”

He said there was not enough drinking water on board the vessels, and the crew were reduced to eating tomatoes from the stores to wet their throats. He also said that on one occasion a skipper threw an empty Coke can at the crew.

All the men the BBC spoke to described shortages of proper clothing, food and water.

aype Rubi was a young Filipino when he worked on board the TN dredger Sea Lady in 2012.

“Picking up and throwing out rocks is really tiring,” he said.

“The boat had CCTV, so the skipper could watch us. If we stop, he'd pull down the window and say: ‘Why are you resting’?”

Jaype said it was “super cold” and there was not enough food.

When he spoke to his mum on the phone, he started crying. “I said: 'I want to go home because it's a nightmare working on that boat'.”

Jaype said he was subjected to verbal abuse and was treated “like a slave".

Other men said that, despite arriving in the UK on 48-hour transit visa, they were told to work onshore in the TN yard at Annan, in breach of their visa entitlement.

One man, Jovito Abiero, told the BBC he was sometimes sent to the home of the company owner Tom Nicholson to do gardening.

On 22 August 2012, Joel was aboard the Philomena off the coast of Northern Ireland during rough weather.

He was fixing a broken link in the metal nets when the towing bar swung up. He leapt out of the way - but fell and hit his head on the deck.

His crew mates estimated he was unconscious for up to 15 minutes.

When Joel woke up with a bandage on his head, he asked his skipper - Tom Nicholson Jr – if they were going to hospital.

“He said: 'No, we're not going to the hospital. We continue fishing',” said Joel.

Joel was given paracetamol by the skipper and his head was bandaged. The Philomena didn’t turn around and head for the port of Troon in Ayrshire until 11 hours after the accident.

Joel got off the Philomena, never to return. He found support at the Fishermen’s Mission, a harbourside charity that supports seafarers.

At that time the mission was run by two sisters, Paula Daly and Karen Burston, who helped Joel get medical help. They had been hearing rumours about TN boats for some time.

“In 2012, it became really quite abundantly clear that we were getting the same message from quite a few different crew,” said Paula.

“There were so many things that were so wrong,” added Karen.

Operation Alto
Police forces on several UK coasts had long been aware of allegations about TN Trawlers.

The company had been prosecuted in 2007 for illegal catches worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Tom Nicholson and TN Trawlers were ordered to pay £473,000 under proceeds of crime laws.

They were also ordered to pay almost £150,000 in fines and costs after the Maritime and Coastguard Agency found a string of defects and safety breaches on vessels between 2009 and 2011.

A 2012 police briefing, seen by the BBC, also noted six Filipino fishermen swam ashore from TN boats and complained of mistreatment.

That year, police in Dumfries and Galloway launched Operation Alto, an investigation into human trafficking and labour abuse at TN Trawlers.

Eighteen former TN Trawlers employees – including Joel – passed into the Home Office’s National Referral Mechanism, a system which identifies and supports victims of human trafficking.
 
Several people have been injured after a Ferris wheel caught fire at a music festival in eastern Germany.

Video showed two carriages on the wheel alight with smoke billowing into the air near the city of Leipzig.

More than a dozen people were taken to hospital including one person who was injured in a fall and four with burns.

The cause of the fire is still being investigated.
 
Scientists baffled by a mysterious object travelling at over 1 million mph across our galaxy. Currently over 400 light years from earth, the object known as CWISE J1249 is very unlikely to be a probe due to it's large size.around 30,000 times bigger than earth. CWISE J1249 is 8 per cent of the sun's mass.

This unusual size puts J1249 somewhere between a star and a planet Dr Darren Baskill, astronomy lecturer at the university of Sussex told bbc science focus. 'I can't describe the level of excitement ' said Baskill
Source , Science forums. c0m
 
Squirrels were struggling in a heat wave so she made them a ‘Squirrel Spa’

Breyana Elwell never liked rodents, but after it became clear the neighboring squirrels were suffering from the heat, she began to warm to them.
Living in New Braunfels, Texas, she maintains a sort of “squirrel resort” where the arboreal rodents can stop by, cool down, grab a bite, and lounge until the heat of the day passes.
View attachment 978486
Building little tables and attaching them to the side of trees, squirrels can now stay outside Elwell’s house and bask in the breeze of the fans while munching on nuts, corn, and fruit frozen in ice cubes—a must in the over 100°F heat.
View attachment 978487
In general, one should never feed or care for wild animals. As soon as they learn that easier pickings are available adjacent to humans, they will abandon their wild lifestyle and instincts, largely to their own detriment. However, hundreds of thousands of squirrels around the country already negotiate human civilization on a daily basis.
 
Squirrels were struggling in a heat wave so she made them a ‘Squirrel Spa’

Breyana Elwell never liked rodents, but after it became clear the neighboring squirrels were suffering from the heat, she began to warm to them.
Living in New Braunfels, Texas, she maintains a sort of “squirrel resort” where the arboreal rodents can stop by, cool down, grab a bite, and lounge until the heat of the day passes.
View attachment 978486
Building little tables and attaching them to the side of trees, squirrels can now stay outside Elwell’s house and bask in the breeze of the fans while munching on nuts, corn, and fruit frozen in ice cubes—a must in the over 100°F heat.
View attachment 978487
In general, one should never feed or care for wild animals. As soon as they learn that easier pickings are available adjacent to humans, they will abandon their wild lifestyle and instincts, largely to their own detriment. However, hundreds of thousands of squirrels around the country already negotiate human civilization on a daily basis.
@ThatRita what do you think about this?
 
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