Tuesday, January 07, 2020

France in flames as furious Macron strikers block Lyon station with huge blaze

EMMANUEL MACRON was sent another warning by protestors in Gare de Lyon as they lit a huge fire in the road ahead of further protests against France’s pension reforms.

By CLAIRE ANDERSON






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President Emmanuel Macron has angered workers with unpopular pension reforms which require people to work until 64 in order to qualify for a full pension – two years past the official retirement age. The public outrage has resulted in the biggest strike in decades in France shutting down public transport services. Numerous train lines, especially in Paris, have been seriously disrupted as a result of the strikes.
Recent footage on Twitter has shown protestors sparking a large bonfire in the huge train station as one protestor walked around with a lit flare.
Unions are trying to force the former investment banker to abandon his plans, with nationwide strikes since December 5, making them the longest in the country since the upheaval of 1968.
Mr Macron said in the prime-time televised address to the nation: “The retirement reform that I’ve committed myself to before you will be carried through because it is a project of social justice and progress."
He also stressed his belief that a compromise with unions would be found.
macron news
Macron was sent another warning by protestors in Gare de Lyon (Image: Twitter @TeleiaLuttes)
macron news
President Emmanuel Macron has angered workers with unpopular pension reforms (Image: Twitter @TeleiaLuttes)
But French trade union chief CGT leader Philippe Martinez reacted with fury, telling broadcaster BFM: “I was under the impression of having heard these words a thousand times.
“I still do not see anything new in the government’s position.
“The alarm signal needs to be louder, we need strikes everywhere.”
Nevertheless, he said his organisation would be among those meeting with government officials on January 7.

macron news
The public outrage has resulted in the biggest strike in decades in France (Image: Twitter @TeleiaLuttes)

Paris: Firefighters tackle blaze at yellow vest protest


On January 4 French police fired tear gas in low-level clashes in the centre of Paris with demonstrators protesting government plans to overhaul the country's pension system.
Police briefly used the tear gas in the city's Bastille area and at the Gare de l'Est railway station after demonstrators, who were joined by "Yellow Vests" anti-government activists, tried to enter the station complex.
Mr Macron has said reforms are essential to simplify the current convoluted pensions system, but his opponents say they will result in many French people having to work for longer.
"People have to think a bit about what kind of society they want in general and, on a more personal level, whether you're 20, 30, 40 or 50, one day you'll retire," said Jean-Gabriel Maheo, an industrial technician who said he was in his fifties.
"If the currently proposed system passes in the way it is laid out, it will be a social catastrophe. Already, the previous reforms are seeing people retire with measly pensions," added Maheo, as he took part in the Paris demonstration on Saturday.
Much of France has been crippled by a national transport strike since the anti-pensions protest first began in early December. Another big nationwide demonstration is due to take place on January 9.

Emmanuel Macron pension crisis: President accused of ripping apart France’s social fabric

EMMANUEL MACRON has been accused of ripping apart France's social fabric as the President intends to continue to push forward with his pension reform plans. The government’s plan to merge the country’s 42 pension schemes into a single, points-based system has been rejected by union leaders and sparked crippling transport strikes.

By ROMINA MCGUINNESS

Emmanuel Macron should ‘withdraw reform’ says Fabien Roussel


French MEP Jordan Bardella, the vice-president of the rightwing National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen, accused Emmanuel Macron on Sunday of destroying the country’s “social heritage” as he slammed the president’s “unfair” pension reform plans. “Emmanuel Macron is unravelling our social heritage,” M Bardella said in a joint interview with RTL radio, LCI television and Le Figaro daily, before calling for a referendum on the controversial reform.

The president “is not interested in protecting the interests of the French,” the rightwing politician continued.
M Bardella added: “The government is forcing through a project that has been rejected by the French.”
He also described the pension reform as “extremely unfair”.
“The French have understood that the pension overhaul is unjustified, unfair and will force people to work longer for less,” he wrote on Twitter later in the day.  
Macron
Emmanuel Macron hascome under criticism for his pension reforms (Image: Getty)
Crippling transport strikes against the pension changes have been ongoing since December 5, upsetting travel plans and hitting shops and businesses over the key Christmas period.
But a new poll by Ifop published Sunday in Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper showed that 44 percent of French people still support the strike action.
Labour leaders have, for their part, urged citizens to take part in fresh mass demonstrations against the pension reform on January 9.
M Macron insists that his reforms are needed to simplify the costly and convoluted pension system, but his opponents and unions argue they will force scores of French people to work for longer and reduce benefits.
The government wants to merge the country’s 42 separate pension schemes into a single, points-based system under which for each euro contributed, every pensioner would have equal rights.
The reform would also set a “pivot age” of 64 at which retirees would benefit from a full pension, though they could still legally leave at 62 – the official retirement age, a change unionists are fiercely opposed to.
Unions have threatened to step up their protests unless M Macron withdraws the reform.
But the centrist government has stood its ground and repeatedly rejected calls to drop the reform altogether.  
M Macron vowed last week to press ahead with his overhaul of the pension system despite the nationwide strikes.
In a televised address on New Year’s Eve, he said: “The retirement reform that I’ve committed myself to before you will be carried through because it is a project of social justice and progress.”
M Macron added that he expected his government to quickly find a compromise with union leaders on the reform, but without departing from the principles laid out by ministers.
His speech was slammed by the leader of CGT union Philippe Martinez, who said he “did not see anything new in the government’s position”.
“The alarm signal needs to be louder. We need strikes everywhere,” M Martinez told the news channel BFM TV.  
• The Ifop poll of 1,005 people aged 18 and over was conducted online on January 2-3.  

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UK WEATHER INFOGRAPHIC POLAR VORTEX

SNOWMARGEDDON 

Weather WARNING: Monster POLAR CYCLONE raging in North Atlantic - Will it hit UK?
A MONSTER 940 millibar cyclone is developing a massive storm across the north Atlantic with waves of up to 15 metres being created by the high winds. The waves will reach the Faroe Islands tonight and tomorrow but will the cyclone hit the UK?

By TIM REDIGOLO
PUBLISHED: 15:12, Tue, Jan 7, 2020

UK Weather: Icelandic storms to hit

The huge cyclone is growing and moving northeast, building up a strong wind field of hurricane-force winds. This means a potential for a violent windstorm spreading towards Iceland and the Faroe Islands on Tuesday night, continuing into Wednesday.

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UK snow MAP: 70mph storm to bring widespread snow TOMORROW

The monster cyclone will be created as a result of a combination of two large storms.
One cyclone was northeast of Iceland, while another larger one is west of the island, in the north Atlantic.

Overnight on Wednesday, the two will merge into a large and deep cyclone over Iceland and the Greenland Sea.

The huge storm will drift northeast throughout Wednesday and gradually weaken on its way towards the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard.


Weather WARNING: Monster POLAR CYCLONE raging in North Atlantic - Will it hit UK? (Image: wxcharts.com)

READ MORE
BBC Weather: Carol Kirkwood's urgent warning ahead of extreme winds

The monster cyclone will be created as a result of a combination of two large storms.

One cyclone was northeast of Iceland, while another larger one is west of the island, in the north Atlantic.

Overnight on Wednesday, the two will merge into a large and deep cyclone over Iceland and the Greenland Sea.

The huge storm will drift northeast throughout Wednesday and gradually weaken on its way towards the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard.
Map showing that high wind gusts will hit parts of northern Scotland (Image: wxcharts.com)


The pressure readings of the cyclone seen here on January 6 (Image: ocean.weather.gov)

Very high gusts of winds are expected in the north Atlantic with maximum speeds of 94mph.

Exposed areas and high land could even experience gusts of up to 124mph.

Parts of Scotland will experience high winds come midday on Wednesday.

The worst affected parts of Scotland will be the north of the country.

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UK snow forecast: Charts show snow batter Britain –powerful storms hit


The stormy western winds will continue throughout Wednesday and blow over northern Europe.

As it carries colder air there will be a drop in temperatures in Norway and the arrival of snow.

Another low depression will approach from the west of the UK, with strong winds around its centre.

That means spells of showers in southern Ireland and England in the early hours of Thursday.
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EXTREME WEATHER

Indonesia Turns to Weather Control to Stop Rains Amidst Deadly Floods


Yessenia Funes
Friday 1:00PM
•
Filed to:THIS DOESN'T SOUND TOO GOOD


Photo: Getty

The Indonesian capital of Jakarta experienced some of the worst flooding in nearly a decade as the new year began this week. At least 43 people have died and nearly 400,000 have been left displaced.

More rains are expected in the coming week, further adding to the country’s watery woes. As a last-ditch effort to stave off more flooding, the Indonesian government resorted to a controversial measure of to control the weather by seeding clouds with salt.

Reuters reports that the Indonesian technology agency BPPT conducted three rounds of seeding Friday, and officials are expecting to continue the program as long as necessary. The idea behind cloud seeding is pretty straightforward. Salt, soot, or other tiny particles known as aerosols form the nucleus of water droplets—the precursor to raindrops—inside clouds. Injecting them is typically used to create rain, not stop it. In the past, governments in South Korea and Thailand have explored cloud seeding as an option to make it rain in an effort to combat severe air pollution.

These Governments Want to Fight Air Pollution by Controlling the Weather

Air pollution is taking over cities around the world. As the State of the Air report released…Read more

Indonesia is trying something different by overloading clouds with particles. This method should create a sort of surplus of nuclei where water can form into droplets, forcing them to compete for water. Since there wouldn’t be enough water in the cloud for each droplet to hold and combine to become raindrops, it should in theory stop rainfall. Daniel Rosenfeld, an award-winning researcher on the topic and professor of earth sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Earther that this type of cloud seeding has happened in the skies over Russia and China.

However, these locations don’t have tropical clouds. And tropical clouds—like the ones in Indonesia—carry a lot more water, Rosenfeld said. The cloud seeding may delay the rain from falling, but he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. In fact, Rosenfeld worries that this would cause the clouds to release more rain than they otherwise would have.

“I am very doubtful that it would work where there is so much water such as a deep tropical cloud. It seems to be pretty desperate,” he told Earther. “They are trying to hang on to any straw to save a situation. Even if the chance to succeed is very small.”

George Bomar, a cloud seeding expert with the state of Texas’ weather modification program, told Earther that this area still needs more research to know whether it can truly stop rain from falling. He told Earther in an email that there’s some evidence that “vigorous seeding in the early stage of a thunderstorm’s life” can make water fall as ice, instead, but even that is still a concept.

“Having said that, I do not rule out the potential for seeding to suppress rainfall,” he wrote.

The situation in Indonesia is a grave one. On New Year’s Eve, more than 14 inches of rain fell, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Authorities don’t expect the rain to let up until next week. This is Indonesia’s monsoon season (which lasts until March) so heavy rainfall isn’t unheard of. But this rainfall has been particularly unforgiving. Roads are closed, and the power is out. Even flights have been canceled as the airport faces flooding, too. More intense rainfall is one of the hallmarks of climate change due to the simple fact that a warmer atmosphere can hold more water. That makes extreme events like the one that pounded Indonesia more likely.

Heavy rain is hardly the only climate threat Jakarta faces. Jakarta is sinking at the same time as seas rise. That’s why the government is moving the capital to East Kalimantan. That’s not a bad idea, especially as climate change threatens Jakarta’s residents with further flooding as sea levels rise and storms become more powerful. This week’s heavy rainfall—and the fact that the government has turned to cloud seeding as a last resort—only adds to the need to get out of harms way.
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SCI-TECH

Aliens exist and they could be living among us, says Britain's first astronaut
Rob Picheta
CNN
Published Monday, January 6, 2020 

British astronaut has wild theory about aliens


Britain's first astronaut says aliens exist and they could already be living among us.

Aliens definitely exist, Britain's first astronaut has said -- and it's possible they're living among us on Earth but have gone undetected so far.

Helen Sharman, who visited the Soviet Mir space station in 1991, told the Observer newspaper on Sunday that "aliens exist, there's no two ways about it."

"There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life," she went on. "Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not."

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Then, in a tantalizing theory that should probably make you very suspicious of your colleagues, Sharman added: "It's possible they're here right now and we simply can't see them."

Sharman was the first of seven Britons to enter space.

The chemist spent eight days as a researcher on the space mission when she was 27, making her one of the youngest people to enter orbit.

NASA rovers are trawling Mars for evidence of past or present life forms, but humankind's endless fascination with extraterrestrial life forms has so far proved fruitless.

Sharman is not the only person to speculate that we've had brushes with aliens, though.

A former Pentagon official who led a secret government program to research potential UFOs, revealed in 2017, told CNN at the time that he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth.

Elsewhere in her interview, Sharman said there is "no greater beauty than looking at the Earth from up high."

"I'll never forget the first time I saw it," she added.

Sharman also discussed her frustration with observers defining her by her sex. "People often describe me as the first British woman in space, but I was actually the first British person. It's telling that we would otherwise assume it was a man," she said.

"When Tim Peake went into space, some people simply forgot about me. A man going first would be the norm, so I'm thrilled that I got to upset that order."

CNN has reached out to Sharman for comment.

---30---
IT WAS ANOTHER BRIT WHO ACTUALLY 
WAS IN CONTACT WITH AN ALIEN


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Earthquake Shows How Fragile Puerto Rico's Electric Grid Still Is



Yessenia Funes
1/6/2020  3:55PM
Filed to:PUERTO RICO


The power of Monday’s earthquake.Photo: AP

Puerto Rico just can’t seem to catch a break. The people of the island have been dealing with a series of small earthquakes for about a week, but the situation worsened Monday when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook the southwest part of the island early morning.

The quake was strong enough to knock out power for thousands of people in the southern part of the island. This latest incident is just a reminder of how fragile the electrical grid in Puerto Rico remains since Hurricane Maria hit more than two years ago. The storm ripped the island’s grid apart, leading to the worst in U.S. history. And the island still has a long way to go before ensuring that another months-long power outage doesn’t occur following a natural disaster.

Before Monday’s 5.8-magnitude earthquake, smaller ones averaging around magnitude 4.6 had been shaking the island. While the larger shake luckily didn’t result in any reported deaths or injuries, at least five homes in Guánica were left damaged as a result, according to El Nuevo Dia. Punta Ventana, a stone arch hailed for its natural wonder on the island, fell apart due to the earthquake.

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The island is “fairly seismically active,” Wendy Bohon, a geologist with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, told Earther, but the current level of activity is a bit unusual. Puerto Rico rests in between two tectonic plates: the Caribbean Plate and North American Plate. Wherever these boundaries exist in the world, seismological activity follows because the rubbing of tectonic plates is what creates earthquakes in the first place. However, now that a larger earthquake has rattled the island, smaller aftershocks are sure to follow. And there’s always the small chance of a larger earthquake, instead.

“The people of Puerto Rico have had a long night,” Bohon told Earther. “They’ve had a long couple of days, and it’s not going to end yet.”

It appears the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority shut down a couple of power substations during the earthquake, per El Nuevo Dia. Still, power hasn’t been restored to affected communities, many of which are scarred by the last time they were left without power.

“That’s one of the things we try and stress when we talk to government officials,” Bohon said. “Maintaining strong infrastructure in the face of these disasters is critical. It’s also very, very difficult.”

What makes it all the harder in Puerto Rico is the lack of funds to properly address the island’s infrastructure, which was already in rough shape even before Maria hit. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has funded only 2 percent of the roughly 9,000 financial requests for long-term recovery projects on the island, according to the New York Times. The Trump administration delayed the appropriations of billions of dollars worth of recovery aid to the island even as Texas and Florida have seen thousands of projects receive the aid necessary to begin recovery after Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Michael respectively. Then, there’s the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which illegally withheld relief dollars meant to help the island.

Now, Puerto Rico remains in basically the same state it was in more than two years ago right before Hurricane Maria hit.

Federico de Jesús, a senior adviser to the coalition Power 4 Puerto Rico, was visiting family on the island when the earthquake hit. He awoke to everything in his room shaking. He told Earther he felt like he was in a boat. What worries him the most about these earthquakes is the risk a tsunami could pose.

Roberto Garcia, the meteorologist-in-charge at the San Juan National Weather Service office, told Earther Hurricane Maria left many of these systems damaged. It’s unclear how many have been fixed or restored since then. Each municipality is responsible for its own system, and the sirens are not a federal requirement. Still, de Jesús worries that “if there was a tsunami, we wouldn’t find out.

“Thank God that there wasn’t, but that goes to show how the infrastructure here is still so fragile after Maria, and there’s still so much to be done to make sure that Puerto Rico is ready for any type of natural disaster: hurricane, earthquake, or otherwise.”

So far, the types of earthquakes hitting the coast of Puerto Rico aren’t the type that create tsunamis, Bohon said. The plates have been sliding past each other in these recent events. In order for a tsunami to occur, the tectonic plates must push upward and lift the seafloor, which is what causes the waves to rise.

These days, unfortunately, the island doesn’t need a tsunami to lose power. It doesn’t need much, in fact. And when power is lost, many vulnerable individuals—including survivors of domestic violence, those who rely on respiratory machines and refrigeration for medicine, and people who are deaf—suffer disproportionately. They’re already dealing with a ton of shit as is, but the darkness only makes it worse.

“There are so many pockets of vulnerable people. This just ripples out in a way that people don’t understand,” Erica Gonzalez, the director of Power for Puerto Rico, told Earther. “Among the concerns are that people who are already vulnerable to begin with, that we saw super impacted after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, are going to be affected again.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yessenia Funes
Senior staff writer, Earther. The one who "pulls the race card" in the name of environmental justice. You dig?



Dense non aqueous phase liquid >Yessenia Funes
1/06/20 7:41pm

From a USGS geology type via NOAA:
The Puerto Rico Trench: Implications for Plate Tectonics and Earthquake and Tsunami



Figure 1. Bathymetry of the northeast corner of the Caribbean plate. The main topographic features of this area include: the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc, the old inactive volcanic arc of the Greater Antilles (Virgin Islands to Hispaniola), and the Caribbean and North American oceanic plates. Note that the Puerto Rico Trench, a deep trough where the North American plate slides past and underneath the Antilles, becomes deeper and wider north of Puerto Rico. A limestone platform is tilted toward the trough in this area. Other large-scale features are the Muertos Trough, where Caribbean plate crust may slide under the Antilles, and the Virgin Islands and Anegada Trough, whose origin is unknown. Image courtesy of USGS .






Figure 2. Location of earthquakes as a function of depth and size in the northeastern Caribbean. Barbed lines represent subduction zones; arrows represent the direction of relative plate motion; dashed lines represent migration of the line of volcanoes from an older line to a newer one farther west; and (-)g represents the location of the largest minimum gravity anomaly on Earth.



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