U.S.Alaska selfie-takers told to stay off quake-buckled road 
RACHEL D’OROAssociated Press•
FILE – In this Nov. 30, 2018 file photo, provided by Jonathan M. Lettow, people walk along Vine Road after an earthquake in Wasilla, Alaska. Alaska State Troopers are asking that people do not take selfies in front of the buckled roadway north of Anchorage, Alaska. (Jonathan M. Lettow via AP, File)ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — With sizable shockwaves still emanating from last week’s powerful earthquake, authorities in Alaska are urging the selfie-taking public to stay away from a road that was badly mangled.Some photos posted on social media show people even climbing into large cracks on the buckled road in Wasilla north of Anchorage, Alaska State Trooper spokesman Jonathon Taylor said Tuesday. Signs and barricades have been set up to keep people away from the site, whose ground liquefied from the force of Friday’s 7.0 magnitude quake near Anchorage.”It looks sort of like shattered pieces of glass, if you will, from above, which makes a very fascinating visual. But it is also unsafe to be there,” Taylor said.Repair crews using heavy equipment have started construction on the stretch of road, and spectators can impede that effort, he said.Taylor hasn’t heard about anyone getting hurt, however. He said just being in the area is extremely unsafe, particularly with scores of aftershocks occurring since the earthquake, which was centered 7 miles (11 kilometers) north of Anchorage.The latest substantial aftershock occurred shortly after 7 a.m. Tuesday.The 4.6 magnitude temblor was felt in Anchorage. It was the 13th with a magnitude of 4.5 and above since Friday’s quake, according to U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist John Bellini.More than 2,100 aftershocks have occurred since the first earthquake, including a 5.7 shaker that arrived within minutes. The vast majority of the aftershocks are too small to feel, Bellini said.Friday’s earthquake damaged roads and structures, cracked roadways and collapsed highway ramps. But no catastrophic damage, injuries or deaths have been reported.Alaska Railroad freight trains resumed runs between Anchorage and Fairbanks on Tuesday following repairs to earthquake damage that prevented trains making the trek. The trip is 350 miles (563 kilometers) each way.Officials say passenger trains will resume service Thursday with a flagstop train run that goes part of the way to Fairbanks, followed by the resumption Saturday of the railroad’s regular winter runs.Schools in Anchorage have been closed until Dec. 10. An elementary school in the Anchorage suburb of Eagle River that been deemed unsafe to occupy will remain closed for the rest of the school year, said Morgan Duclos, a school district spokeswoman.The American Red Cross said Tuesday it has provided a total 182 overnight stays among four emergency shelters set up in Anchorage and to the north.Three of the shelters have closed, spokeswoman Cari Dighton said. One shelter remains open in Anchorage, serving 65 dinners Monday night and providing overnight shelter for 44 people, she said._Follow Rachel D’Oro at https://twitter.com/rdoro
renee.duffAccuWeather•Tsunami warnings were issued after a powerful earthquake struck off the coast of New Caledonia on Wednesday afternoon, local time.The 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck 104 miles (168 km) east-southeast of Tadine, New Caledonia, at a shallow depth of 6 miles (10 km), according to the United States Geological Service.
Several aftershocks have rocked the area following the strong earthquake, with one of 6.6 magnitude.
This Viral Video Shows the Terrifying Moment Falling Snow Shattered a Driver’s Windshield
Photo credit: Kevin Hoffer/Wood TVExtreme weather causes problems for motorists every winter. If you’re not careful, heavy snow can turn a morning commute from a big headache to a dangerous situation. One driver in Kalamazoo, Michigan found this out the hard way last month when he was cruising down the highway on his way to work.Kevin Hoffer was driving underneath an overpass when chunks of snow and ice displaced from a plow truck crashed onto his SUV’s windshield. His dashcam captured the entire incident on video, and the footage is terrifying.”Soon as it hit the windshield, the windshield just shattered,” Hoffer told 24 Hour News 8.He said he saw the plow passing by overhead, but „thought nothing of it.””I didn’t expect [the snow] to hit,” Hoffer explained. „I expected to actually get past it or for it to come down before it got to me.”Though the windshield shattered into a web of cracks, it did not break completely and Hoffer was not injured. His now viral video serves as a scary reminder to drivers to be aware of their surroundings during harsh conditions-and don’t forget to look up!
By Polina Ivanova
Reuters•
Cranes and ships are seen in the Azov Sea port of Berdyansk Cranes and ships are seen in the Azov Sea port of Berdyansk, Ukraine November 30, 2018. Picture taken November 30, 2018. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich By Polina Ivanova BERDYANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – When the Island Bay cargo ship arrived from Beirut at the Kerch Strait, gateway to the Azov Sea, it sailed into a perfect storm of geopolitics and bad weather.The following day, Russia opened fire on three Ukrainian naval ships, impounded them and detained their sailors, some of them wounded. It then blocked the strait by putting a tanker underneath a new bridge it has built linking the Russian mainland to the Crimean peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.While the world digested the implications of the Nov. 25 incident, the most explosive clash in recent years, Russia said it had reopened the channel to the Azov Sea, which is shared by Russia and Ukraine.But Island Bay remained at anchor outside the strait, lashed by gale force winds and sleet, its hull icing over while cargo ships amassed on either side.On Monday, a week on, the captain reported seeing 20 vessels awaiting clearance to cross. Refinitiv data that day also showed 20 Ukraine-bound vessels held up at the strait since Nov. 25, with two others allowed through.Meanwhile, Island Bay’s cargo of 5,500 tonnes of wheat, destined for flour mills in Libya, waited in the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk.The saga of the ship is a window on the leverage Moscow has over Ukraine’s Azov seaboard, affecting dock workers, port operators, brokers and farmers who depend on the route.Russia, whose coast guards began inspecting traffic in the Kerch Strait eight months ago, blamed inclement weather for the delay. But on Sunday, when the skies cleared, just a handful of ships passed through; by Monday evening, the Island Bay’s captain’s frustration was beginning to show.”It is acceptable weather for transit. Coast guards have own opinion,” his log, seen by Reuters, said. That day, he reported seeing just two ships cross into the Azov Sea.Ukraine says the hiatus is one of many since the Russian spot-checks began in May, when Russia opened the Kerch bridge, interrupting exports of grain and steel and imports of coal. Moscow denies any disruption.THE STEVEDORES In Berdyansk’s port, where icy winds had recently ripped off the roof of a nearby shed, staff of stevedore company Ascet Shipping were reading the daily reports from the Island Bay with growing concern.Ascet loads almost a million tonnes of Ukrainian grain a year onto cargo ships in Berdyansk and was waiting to load the Island Bay; its size means each day of waiting time costs around $2,000-$2,500, Ascet’s chief executive, Denis Rusin, said.This has made Berdyansk an unpopular port in recent months.”Ship owners do not want to go to Berdyansk,” said Rusin, whose clients include U.S. firm Cargill [CARG.UL], one of the world’s largest dry bulk and tank shipping companies. „Buyers are refusing to bet on passage.”Since Russia and Ukraine clashed in the strait, Ukraine has introduced martial law in 10 regions, including the Azov Sea coast – highlighting the risks of doing business with Berdyansk.”For us this was the worst week in recent years,” Rusin said. „Clients have stopped considering the possibility of signing contracts for delivery in January, let alone February or spring,” he said.THE PORT Some Ukrainian politicians have accused Moscow of trying to strangle Ukraine’s Azov Sea ports in preparation for an invasion from the east, following on from Crimea’s annexation and the subsequent breakaway of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.Moscow says that idea is a fantasy dreamt up by Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders ahead of elections next year. It says it has the right to patrol the strait.But Berdyansk’s businesses say the patrols target ships bound for Ukraine, causing damaging delays.The recent escalation in tensions has not affected ships coming to pick up grain from the Russian side of the Azov Sea, according to Sergei Filipov, director of trading firm QAM7 Dubai, which has operations there. He said inspections have delayed travel by the usual two or three days.On its eleventh day at anchor in Kerch Strait, with skies finally clear, Island Bay reported to Berdyansk: „We called everywhere to make guards (come and) inspect the vessel, but their intentions cannot be explained.”The situation has sent Rusin racing to further revise down his business forecasts.Climbing out onto the windswept roof of his office on Friday, he pointed to a single truck of grain where multiple trucks used to line up along the dock.”We had expected to load around 150,000 tonnes over the next three months… Maybe 200,000,” he said. Now the company is preparing for anything between 50,000 tonnes and no business at all, he said.”This was a change of plan that happened this week.”The Azov Sea grain supply chain makes up just 2 to 3 percent of Ukraine’s agricultural exports, deputy central bank chief Dmitry Sologub said. But for the southeastern Zaporozhye region, home to 1.8 million people, it is critical.At the government Port Authority in Berdyansk, officials said they feared for the port’s future as clients look to other locations with direct access to the Black Sea.”Of course we would prefer (to use other ports),” said Erdem Sekreter, fleet manager at Turkey’s Bayraktar shipping group, which has two ships waiting to cross the Kerch Strait to reach the Ukrainian coast.”It is getting more expensive for ship-owners to go to the Azov Sea – the Ukrainian side of course,” he added. „We are paying out of our pocket now.”FARMERS AND TRADERS Bison Group owns 40,000 hectares of arable land in Zaporozhye region and exports much of its harvest via Berdyansk.With ship-owners raising freight charges to factor in the new risks in the Azov Sea, the costs will be passed down to grain producers, Bison deputy director Igor Serov said. „It hits agricultural producers really hard.”Prices will have to go down by at least $10 per tonne, a trader at Atria Brokers, which handles Berdyansk grain, said.But producers may not have other options. The railway infrastructure is not in place to send exports via Black Sea ports instead, Serov said, and transferring grain by truck to Odessa, for example, would cost an extra $40 per tonne.Buyers are also pulling back, afraid of the risks.”Our sales have fallen,” the Atria trader said. „It has affected us in a fundamental way.”Every day Island Bay’s cargo sits in port, it racks up costs for traders. Grain can spoil, and storage costs are steep.”The market is suffering… everyone along the chain is paying the price for these war games,” a grain trader said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation.On Tuesday, Ukraine’s agriculture ministry said some grain shipments from the Azov Sea had resumed.Five of the 14 ships headed to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, held up since the stand-off, were still waiting to cross on Wednesday, Refinitiv data showed. One had turned back to Istanbul.In comparison, of the ships aiming for one of Russian city Rostov-on-Don’s ports, that had arrived to Kerch Strait since the stand-off began, none were still waiting for passage, the data showed the same day.Only one out of the six boats headed to Berdyansk had crossed by Wednesday. After twelve days at anchor in the waters near the strait, Island Bay was still waiting.(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets in KIEV and Polina Devitt in MOSCOW; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
San Francisco, Sacramento and Stockton were briefly ranked as the world’s three most polluted cities during the wildfires, according to Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit that collects data from air-quality monitoring sites.Countries that often top the list for poor air quality levels include India, China and Bangladesh.Air pollution in India is due to population growth, increase in the numbers of vehicles, use of fuels, poor transportation systems, poor land use patterns, industrialization, as well as ineffective environmental regulations.Residential buildings are seen shrouded in smog in Noida on the outskirts of New Delhi, November 5. ]]>📸
News Katowice Notebook: More Polish coal mines ‘are not an option’Reuters•
General view during the opening of COP24 UN Climate Change Conference 2018 in Katowice, Poland December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel KATOWICE, Poland (Reuters) – Talks billed as the most important U.N. conference since the landmark Paris 2015 deal on climate change have begun in the Polish city of Katowice, the capital of the Silesian mining district.Over the next two weeks, the aim is to make an end-of-year deadline for agreeing a rule book on how to enforce global action to limit further warming of the planet.Subscribers to Eikon can also find a Take-A-Look compendium of Reuters coverage here:Below is a flavor of the mood around the event, being held in a sprawl of temporary passageways and meeting rooms next to the „Spodek”, a flying-saucer-shaped sports and concert venue.Tuesday 1700 GMT – Concerns mount that any outcome from the two weeks of talks will lack ambition because of repeated Polish statements that it plans to build more coalmines.Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old who has been refusing to go to school in Sweden in protest at the world’s climate inaction, says Poland and the rest of the world cannot continue digging for coal.”We cannot go down this road of madness any more,” she told Reuters. „It’s just not an option.”1300 GMT – Finance to help poor countries adapt is always a heated debate at U.N. talks.Brazil’s chief negotiator J. Antonio Marcondes has issued a statement calling on developed nations to deliver on an existing pledge to provide $100 billion a year from 2020 to help poorer countries deal with climate change.”If developed economies put off their climate payments any longer, the Paris agreement temperature goals will slip out of reach, with tragic consequences for people and planet,” he said.1200 GMT – While negotiators haggle over finance, Poland and Britain joined forces to press for electric vehicles, a cause close to the heart of the Polish official presiding over the talks Michal Kurtyka – he helped to draw up a government plan to have 1 million electric cars on the roads by 2025.Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said „e-mobility” would help „climate quality and air quality”.Critics say that in Poland electric vehicles will largely run on coal-fired power generation and Polish people often still rely on highly polluting old cars imported mainly from Germany.0800 GMT – Tuesday marks the first official day of negotiation following the ceremonial gathering of heads of state and government on Monday and the handover of the presidency from Fiji, one of the island states at the sharp end of climate change, to Poland, a land of coal.Coincidentally, it is also the day of Saint Barbara, patron saint of miners. A brass band struck up at 6 am local time and marched through the streets. Once they’d woken up the whole town, they joined miners in a central square, wearing gala uniforms and feathered hats rather than their mining helmets.Monday THE PAIN OF TRANSITION Poland’s Michal Kurtyka, who is presiding over the Katowice talks, tells the conference in his opening address Katowice is the logical setting to agree the rules for a transition away from fossil fuel.Katowice, the capital of the Silesian mining region, has had „to move on many times before,” he said, apparently alluding to its dark and difficult history.Coal and steel are still central to its economy, but it has also developed tourism and buildings where exhausted miners formerly slept off their shifts are now elegant restaurants and up-market flats.Within the Polish government, Kurtyka earlier this year moved on from being deputy energy minister to deputy environment minister, in time to bang his gavel at the climate talks.ARNIE IS BACK AND ON A MISSION Actor, body-builder and former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, told reporters he wished he could have used his fictional film role as The Terminator to end fossil fuels.”I’d like to be a terminator in real life, and be able to travel back in time and to stop all fossil fuels when they were discovered. Just imagine! The biggest evil is fossil fuels,” Schwarzenegger said.”STRATEGIC” FUELIn a separate press conference, Polish President Andrzej Duda was meanwhile telling visiting reporters and environmental campaigners Polish coal reserves would last for another 200 years.He said it was Poland’s strategic fuel, guaranteeing energy security and sovereignty and „it would be hard not to use it”.The reality even for Poland, though, is coal does not provide all its needs and its imports from Russia, on whom it already depends for oil and gas, have been rising.LOCALS SCEPTICALOn the streets outside, local citizens are long-suffering and often cynical.Zofia Olszanska, 66, retired, wife of a former coal miner, said the climate talks had kept her awake at night because the endless police sirens accompanying the visiting dignatories ruined her sleep.She was not hopeful the outcome would change her life for the better.”Everybody here uses coal or rubbish to heat their homes. In the evening, I can’t open the windows because of the smell. How can they talk about ecology here? There is no ecology here or in Poland,” she told Reuters.(Reporting by the Reuters Katowice team)
2 US warplanes crash off Japan; 1 rescued, 6 missingMari Yamaguchi, Associated PressAssociated Press•
Two US Marine Corps aircraft, including a C-130 tanker similar to the one pictured, crashed during a refueling operation off the coast of Japan (AFP Photo/David OWSIANKA)TOKYO (AP) — A Marine refueling plane and a fighter jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Japan’s southwestern coast after a midair collision early Thursday, and rescuers found one of the seven crew members in stable condition while searching for the others, officials said.The U.S. Marine Corps said that the 2 a.m. crash involved an F/A-18 fighter jet and a KC-130 refueling aircraft during regular training after the planes took off from their base in Iwakuni, near Hiroshima in western Japan.The crash took place 320 kilometers (200 miles) off the coast.Japan’s Defense Ministry said the aircraft carrying seven crew members in total collided and crashed into the sea south of the Muroto Cape on Shikoku island in southwestern Japan.The Maritime Self-Defense Force, which dispatched aircraft and vessels to join in the search operation, said Japanese rescuers found one of the crew members in stable condition. The Marine Corps said the rescued crew was taken to a hospital at its base in Iwakuni and was being treated, but did not provide any other details.Japanese officials said two crew members were in the F/A-18, and five others in the KC-130.The crash is the latest in recent series of accidents involving the U.S. military deployed to and near Japan.Last month, a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan crashed into the sea southwest of Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, though its two pilots were rescued safely. In mid-October, a MH-60 Seahawk also belonging to the Ronald Reagan crashed off the Philippine Sea shortly after takeoff, causing non-fatal injuries to a dozen sailors.More than 50,000 U.S. troops are based in Japan under the bilateral security pact._Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi
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