Tropical Storm Earl activity report in Carib Sea at 4th August 2016

Tropical storm Earl has been intensifying as it moves through the Caribbean Sea. The GPM satellite spotted hot towers, towering thunderstorms within Earl that indicate the storm may intensify.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite passed over intensifying tropical storm Earl in the Caribbean Sea northeast of Honduras on August 2, 2016 11:56 p.m. EDT. GPM found powerful storms around Earl's forming eye were dropping extremely heavy rainfall at a rate of over 251 mm (9.8 inches) per hour and cloud heights of over 16 km (9.9 miles).

Credits: NASA/JAXA/SSAI, Hal Pierce

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) now predicts that Earl will be a hurricane before it hits Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula tomorrow afternoon. Earl is predicted by NHC to remain in a light to moderate vertical wind shear environment over very warm sea surface temperatures until landfall.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite passed over intensifying tropical storm Earl in the Caribbean Sea northeast of Honduras on Aug. 2, 2016 at 11:56 p.m. EDT (Aug. 3, 2016 at 0356 UTC). GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) showed that powerful storms around Earl's forming eye were dropping extremely heavy rainfall. DPR found that rain was falling at a rate of over 251 mm (9.8 inches) per hour in a band of powerful convective storms.

 

On Aug. 2, 2016 at 11:56 p.m. EDT, the GPM core satellite found powerful storms around Earl's forming eye were dropping extremely heavy rainfall at a rate of over 9.8 inches (251 mm) per hour and cloud heights of over 9.9 miles(16 km).

Credits: NASA/JAXA/SSAI, Hal Pierce

GPM's Radar (DPR Ku band) were used to show in 3-D the towering thunderstorms near Earl's center reaching heights of over 16 km (9.9 miles). These strong thunderstorms called "hot towers" often lead to rapid intensification in a tropical cyclone. NASA research has shown that whenever there is the presence of hot towers, the storm usually intensifies within six hours. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

On Aug. 3, 2016 a hurricane warning is in effect for Puerto Costa Maya, Mexico, southward to the Belize/Guatemala border and for the Bay Islands, Honduras. A tropical storm warning is in effect for the north coast of Honduras from Cabo Gracias a Dios westward to the Honduras/Guatemala border and north of Puerto Costa Maya to Punta Allen, Mexico.

The heavy rainfall rates seen by GPM are evident in the forecast from the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The NHC forecast noted that Earl is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 8 to 12 inches over portions of Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico through Thursday night. Very heavy rain will reach the Mexican states of Tabasco and Veracruz between Thursday night and Saturday morning.  Isolated maximum amounts of 16 inches are possible in Belize and Mexico. 

At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Earl was located near latitude 16.8 North, longitude 85.6 West. Earl is moving toward the west near 14 mph (22 kph), and this general motion is expected to continue with some decrease in forward speed during the next 48 hours. On the forecast track, the core of Earl is expected to pass near the Honduras Bay Islands this afternoon, and then make landfall in Belize tonight or early Thursday.

Maximum sustained winds remain near 70 mph (110 kph) with higher gusts. Additional strengthening is forecast during the next 12 hours or so, and Earl is expected to be a hurricane by the time it makes landfall along the coast of Belize.

At least seven children reported killed in the past two months alone in mines

Blood Mica: Key findings of investigation into child deaths in India's illegal mica mines

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A five-year-old girl collects mica flakes from an open cast illegal mica mine in Giridih district in Jharkhand, India, January 22, 2016. REUTERS/Nita Bhalla

KODERMA/BHILWARA/SYDAPURAM, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In the depths of India's illegal mica mines, where children as young as five work alongside adults, lurks a dark, hidden secret - the cover-up of child deaths with seven killed in the past two months, a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation revealed.

Here are some of the key findings of a three-month long investigation in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh into child labour involved in producing mica, the mineral that puts the sparkle into make-up and car paint:

* Investigations by the Thomson Reuters Foundation found children working in and around mica mines in northern Jharkhand, southern Bihar and in Rajasthan

* At least seven children reported killed in the past two months alone in mines

* Mine operators and victims' families are covering up these deaths, not reporting them but accepting payments for fear of ending the illegal mining that brings much needed income to poor areas, according to campaigners and victims' families

* Farmer Vasdev Rai Pratap's teenage Madan was killed in a mica mine in June but he has not reported his son's death and is awaiting a promised a $1,500 payment from the mine operator

* Workers at Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi's child protection group Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) say the teenager's death is the tip of the iceberg, estimating less than 10 percent of mica mine deaths are reported to the police

* BBA documented over 20 mica-related deaths in June, including Madan and two other teenagers - double the monthly average

* BBA uncovered four deaths in July

* Government officials admit child labour is a problem in some mines but have no reports of children dying in mica mines

* Indian government officials say mica mining is a matter for state governments and out of their hands

* Leading Indian colour and effect pigment maker Sudarshan said experts estimate about 70 percent of mica production in India is from illegal mining in forests and abandoned mines

* Figures from India's Bureau of Mines show the country produced 19,000 tonnes of mica in 2013/14 but the same data shows exports were 128,000 tonnes with the biggest buyers China, Japan and the United States

* Dutch campaign group SOMO says up to 20,000 children are involved in mica mining in Jharkhand and Bihar

* By Indian law children aged under 18 cannot work in mines

* "I know it's dangerous but that's the only work there is," says Basanti, collecting mica in Jharkhand's Giridih area as her 10-year-old son Sandeep descends 3 metres (10 ft) down a make-shift shaft to pound on the wall with a pick-axe.

* Dhanraj Sharma, a commissioner in Rajasthan's Labour Ministry, said he was not aware of child workers in the mines: "They may be playing there, they may be doing some small things for the parents. That doesn't mean they are working."

A tombstone in four languages

Under the Norman kings of Sicily, the island became a prosperous and influential Mediterranean superpower. The coexistence of western, Islamic and Byzantine cultures on Sicily created a multilingual state. In Palermo, the messages on public monuments were frequently in two or three languages. This funerary inscription was set up by Grisandus, a Christian priest, for his mother Anna in AD 1149. Her eulogy is written in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew script) on top, Latin on the left, Greek on the right, and Arabic below.

Learn more about this cultural centre of the ancient and medieval world in our exhibition Sicily: culture and conquest (21 April – 14 August 2016).

Russian chopper crashes in northeast Idlib

A Russian military chopper crashed in the northeastern countryside of the Idlib Governorate on Monday after flying over Jaysh Al-Fateh’s positions near the city of Saraqib.

Based on the footage released by the jihadist rebels of Jaysh Al-Fateh, the Russian pilot was killed during the crash site at the small hilltop of Tal Sultan.

Upon discovering the Russian pilot’s body in northeast Idlib, the jihadist rebels savagely desecrated his remains by dragging his corpse on the ground.

It is still not clear whether or not the jihadist rebels shot down the Russian aircraft; however, the Gulf-backed “moderates” do possess anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM).

More details to come…..

Aerial View Of Huge Warship Formation In The Pacific 2016

Δημοσιεύτηκε στις 30 Ιουλ 2016

Helicopter view of mass warship formation including 40 ships and submarines sailing in formation during RIMPAC 2016. Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) is the world's largest maritime exercise including 26 nations, more than 40 ships and submarines, more than 200 aircraft, and 25,000 personnel. Filmed on July 28, 2016.

The fiery birth of Earth's largest ocean exposed

A volatile arrangement of tectonic plates millions of years ago gave us the Pacific.

NOAA/Science Photo Library

  A computer model simulates the seafloor in the North Pacific.

The Pacific Ocean was born from a geological spasm that started 190 million years ago, whenEarth’s crust ripped apart and fresh lava welled up from below. Now, a new analysis suggests that this seafloor birth was a lot more complex than researchers had thought.

The study is a rare step forward in understanding the origin of the Pacific, one of geology’s most enduring mysteries.

“This is one big piece of the puzzle that we’ve now put into place,” says Lydian Boschman, a geologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She and her colleague Douwe van Hinsbergen report the discovery on 27 July in Science Advances¹.

Because of this continuing cycle of creation and destruction, no seafloor is older than about 200 million years. To see how oceans behaved further back in time, geologists must try to reconstruct the three-dimensional geometry of long-vanished crustal plates.Oceans are born at unstable seams in Earth’s crust, where plates pull apart, allowing molten rock to fill the gap and solidify. The fresh crust pushes older crust away from the seam and towards the edge of a continent. Eventually, the ocean crust crashes into continental crust and, through the process of plate tectonics, getssucked down and recycled deep within the planet.

Mind the gap

Boschman and van Hinsbergen studied the oldest part of the Pacific plate, which lies just east of the Mariana Trench. Previous work suggested that the Pacific was born in what’s known as a geological triple junction, with fresh seafloor spreading outward from each of three intersecting ridges. But that configuration is geologically stable; in the south Atlantic Ocean, a similar triple junction has endured for more than 100 million years without forming a new plate. “There’s no reason to,” says Boschman.

Instead, she says, the Pacific must have been born at an unstable type of triple junction. The three intersecting seams would have had to have been transform faults, in which the two sides of a fault slide past one another. California’s San Andreas fault moves in this fashion.

Three transform faults coming together would have created a triangular gap in the centre. “A triple junction with ridges is not going to make a new plate,” says Boschman. ”A triple junction with transform faults does.” The configuration was probably an accident, she adds.

The work shows how basic thinking about plate tectonics can still yield surprises, says Bernhard Steinberger, a geophysicist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany. “This is one of those rare cases where a discovery could be made simply by an elegant thought,” he says.

Boschman would like to push even further back in time, to unravel the history of the ocean that preceded the Pacific and surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea. She is currently doing fieldwork in Costa Rica, looking for evidence of ancient seafloor rocks scraped up on the side of the continent as the ocean crust was dragged under and destroyed.

Hekla Volcano Dangerous to Airplanes?

A small Hekla eruption. Photo: Páll Stefánsson.

Up to 30 passenger jets fly directly over the Hekla per day. Hekla is Iceland’s most active volcano, erupting four times since 1970.

Hekla has throug the centuries been Iceland's most dreaded volcano; thought to be the entrance to Hell.

In an interview on RÚV earlier this month, University of Iceland professor of geology Páll Einarsson claimed, that these planes should take slightly a different route when flying over Iceland.

Páll insists that his advice should be taken seriously, saying that these planes could fly straight into an ash plume. He explained that an eruption at Hekla did not need to melt through a thick glacier, meaning the plume would rise with full force straightaway before rising 10 km (30 thousand feet) into the air.

In 2001 geologists managed to predict an eruption in Hekla approximately one hour before it started. This Páll says is not guaranteed and the risk is too high in his view. He says most of the planes are from Turkish airlines and they would need to correct their path only slightly to eliminate any danger from a Hekla eruption.

Pope thanks Poles for clinging to faith in difficult times

Pope Francis prayed on Thursday before Poland's holiest icon - the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora - and said outdoor Mass for a congregation numbering in the tens of thousands, thanking Poles for holding on to their faith in difficult times.

Francis praised what he called "the contagious power of a genuine faith, passed down from family to family" in Poland, which is about 98 percent Catholic.

He said their faith had stayed strong in many situations throughout history. Poland is renowned for keep its Catholic flame burning during decades of Communist rule.

As the 79-year-old pope was blessing the altar at the start of the Mass, he tripped on a step but was helped up by aides and did not appear to be hurt. He continued the Mass and read his homily normally.

Francis suffers from sciatica, a medical condition in which pain sometimes shoots down the leg from the lower back.

The pope, whose main purpose in Poland is to preside at an international gathering of Catholic youth in Krakow, was driven to this city about 140 km (87 miles) away instead of taking a helicopter as planned because of the possibility of bad weather.

The shrine is home to the Black Madonna, a Byzantine icon from sometime between the sixth and ninth centuries and brought to Poland some 600 years ago. The icon is painted on wood and covered with silver and jewels.

The shrine has been a focal point in difficult periods of Polish history. Poles flocked there to pray when martial law was declared by the communist government in the early 1980s.

The late Pope John Paul II, who reigned for nearly three decades before he died in 2005, visited the shrine often during his trips to his homeland and donated the blood-stained white sash he was wearing on May 13, 1981, when he was shot in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca.

Francis was due to return to Krakow on Thursday afternoon for formally open World Youth Day, a jamboree of young people around the world that has sometimes been dubbed the "Catholic Woodstock".

(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)

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Pope Francis prays in front of the black Virgin Mary at Czestochowa's Sanctuary, Poland July 28, 2016.