Current Events #2
There Be a Storm a Brewing
Typhoon Usagi has killed at least 25
people in Guangdong province of south
China, the government has said.
Winds of up to 180 km/h (110 mph) were
recorded in some areas, toppling trees and
blowing cars off roads. Its victims drowned
or were hit by debris.
The storm has affected 3.5 million people
on the Chinese mainland.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia24193201
Step 1…Check
An international
monitoring group says
the Syrian government
has handed over an
inventory of its chemical
weapons, a provision in
a U.S.- Russian plan to
avert a possible U.S.
strike on Syria.
The Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons says it has
received the "expected
disclosure" from the
Syrian government.
http://www.voanews.com/content/syriasubmits-chemical-weapons-list-towatchdog/1754337.html
Watch Out for that Tree
The tiny, copper-hued golden lion tamarin
is so beloved in Brazil that its image graces
the country's 20-real bank note. But this
lion-maned monkey is in peril.
There's only one place on earth where the
golden lion tamarin lives in the wild: in
Brazil's Atlantic Forest, or Mata Atlantica,
just north of Rio de Janeiro. Deforestation
in the region has reduced the monkey's
habitat, once a massive ecosystem
stretching for a half-million square miles, to
just 2 percent of its original size.
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/19/224101468/
beloved-brazilian-monkey-clings-to-ashrinking-forest
Turn the Other Cheek?
Compounding that grief for the
Campbell family and others
affected by the bombing is the
question of whether suspect
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should face the
death penalty if he’s convicted — a
punishment that has not been
handed down in Massachusetts in
66 years.
In 1984, pushed in part by its
heavily Catholic population,
Massachusetts officially banned the
practice for state cases. While it’s
still in place for federal cases like
Tsarnaev's, the death penalty
charge has been rarely invoked —
though some wonder if that could
http://news.yahoo.com/boston-marathon-bombingchange this time.
victims-death-penalty-tsarnaev-132145081.html
Shoot-Out at the Park
CHICAGO Those
behind a late-night
attack at a southwest
Chicago park in which
13 people were
wounded, including a 3year-old, used an
assault-style weapon to
spray the crowd with
bullets, making it "a
miracle" no one was
killed, the city's police
superintendent said
Friday.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_16257603810/chicago-park-shooting-leaves13-wounded-including-3-year-old-boy/
Terror in the Food Court
NAIROBI— Thick smoke
poured from the besieged
Nairobi mall where Kenyan
officials said their forces were
closing in on Islamists holding
hostages on Monday, the third
day since Somalia's al
Shabaab launched a raid that
has killed at least 62 people.
It remained unclear how many
gunmen and hostages were
still cornered in the Westgate
shopping centre, after a series
of loud explosions and gunfire
were followed by black smoke
billowing from one part of the
complex.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chikenya-mall-attack-20130923,0,4701268.story
$500 Million Swoosh
It was just another biennial
gala for Oregon Health &
Science University's Knight
Cancer Institute when Phil
Knight took the stage Friday
night and threw the evening
on its head.
The Nike co-founder got the
full attention of the 400
guests on the sixth floor
ballroom in downtown
Portland's The Nines Hotel
in short order: Here's $500
million for cancer research,
he said, if OHSU can match
it in the next two years.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s
sf/2013/09/phil_and_penny_knight_to_ohs
u_1.html
Expensive Luggage Fees?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/22/world/euro
pe/air-france-cocainefound/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2
Bedlam Unearthed
London — In an open pit near the old
Bedlam insane asylum, where the curious
once ogled chained lunatics for the price of
a shiny coin, the skeletons in London’s
closet are climbing to the surface. And
dead men do tell tales.
Take, for example, one poor soul recently
unearthed from a long-lost graveyard in
Bedlam’s back yard — a 16th-century
gentleman who was, perhaps, not so
gentle in his day. His chalky skull bares the
telltale signs of crude brain surgery. An
honest attempt to cure the madness
within? Or a joyride of an operation to
slake the exotic tastes of doctors at a
hospital whose name became synonymous
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/cros
with mayhem? (Bedlam is an archaic
srail-project-unearths-londons-macabrevariation of its current name, Bethlem
past/2013/09/21/766aa41a-2213-11e3Royal Hospital.)
ad1a-1a919f2ed890_story.html
Do Not Eat “High” Fish
Fish that live year-round just above
Bonneville Dam are so chock-full of
contaminants that health authorities on
Monday advised the public not to eat
them at all.
They also urged the public to limit the
consumption of so-called resident fish in
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/20
a 150-mile stretch upstream from
13/09/columbia_rivers_contaminated_r.html
Bonneville Dam.
The World is Shaking
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- An
earthquake in Pakistan, powerful enough
to prompt the appearance of a small island
off the coast, has killed more than 200
people, Pakistani officials said.
The 7.7-magnitude quake struck in a
remote area of southwestern Pakistan on
Tuesday, but it had severe consequences.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/24/world/asia/
pakistanearthquake/index.html?iref=allsearch
Bad Week for Pakistan
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/22/world/asia/
pakistan-attack/index.html?iref=allsearch
Alpinist Indiana Jones
A young man climbing a
French glacier finds a cache
of glittering jewels wrapped in
bags stamped "Made in India"
-- remnants, perhaps, of
cargo from an ill-fated airliner
called the Malabar Princess.
The best thing about it? This
story is true.
It happened early this month
on a glacier overlooking the
southeastern French village
of Chamonix, Albertville
police Chief Sylvain Merly
said Thursday.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/26/world/euro
pe/france-mountainjewels/index.html?c=homepage-t&page=2
Mother Nature Takes a Bite
[I]n the predawn blackness of Aug. 3, 2012,
the earth opened up — a voracious maw
325 feet across and hundreds of feet deep,
swallowing 100-foot trees, guzzling water
from adjacent swamps and belching
methane from a thousand feet or more
beneath the surface.
More than a year after it appeared, the
Bayou Corne sinkhole is about 25 acres
and still growing, almost as big as 20
football fields, lazily biting off chunks of
forest and creeping hungrily toward an
earthen berm built to contain its oily
waters. It has its own Facebook page and
its own groupies, conspiracy theorists who
insist the pit is somehow linked to the Gulf
of Mexico 50 miles south and the
earthquake-prone New Madrid fault 450
miles north. It has confounded geologists
who have struggled to explain this scar in
the earth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/us/gro
und-gives-way-and-a-louisiana-townstruggles-to-find-itsfooting.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=1&
Fairly Nearly Tracker-Jackers
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/world/asia/
china-asian-hornet-deaths/index.html