‘Extremely rare’ deep sea creature found in California ocean. ‘Once in a lifetime’



Helena Wegner
Wed, December 22, 2021

Researchers from a California aquarium were searching for deep sea jellies when they caught a glimpse of an “extremely rare” creature with glowing green eyes.

Monterey Bay Aquarium senior aquarist Thomas Knowles spotted the fish in the Monterey Bay on Dec. 1 from a distance but knew exactly what it was.

“As we slowly approached it, excitement grew in the control room as everyone began to realize what we had found,” Knowles said in a news release from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. “We all knew that this was likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

The creature was a barreleye fish. With visible green bulb-like eyes inside its forehead, the bizarre fish can move them forward to see when its eating, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Though the researchers knew what they were looking at, it was the first time they

have seen the fish.

Researchers have logged more than 5,600 remote dives with more than 27,600 hours of video and they’ve only witnessed the fish nine times.

Though sightings of the strange fish are rare, Knowles said they did not capture the barreleye for their upcoming “Into the Deep” exhibit because they weren’t prepared to care for it at the aquarium.

“Just observing this animal living in its natural habitat is an amazing opportunity for science,” he said in the release.

The rare fish grows to a maximum size of about 6 inches and dwells in the midwater ocean — at depths between 2,000 to 2,600 feet.

These fish are found in the Bering Sea to Japan and Baja California.

“Most of the deep sea truly is unexplored territory, and it is still revealing it wonders to us,” Knowles said.

Trans-Pecos Black-headed Snake spends most of its life underground in Texas

Michael Price
Wed, December 22, 2021

The Trans-Pecos Black-headed Snake (Tantilla cucullata) is a harmless and secretive serpent that is one of five species of the genus Tantilla that call Texas home.

When it comes to rules, it seems that there is only one rule. And that is there are almost always exceptions to rules. But even that statement in and of itself is not a true rule, so maybe this isn’t the place to discuss philosophy.

My point about exceptions to the rules applies to the size of a species of rarely-seen serpent that, up until a decade or so ago, was known from less than 50 specimens.

The Trans-Pecos Black-headed Snake (Tantilla cucullata) is a harmless and uber-secretive serpent that is one of five species of the genus Tantilla that call Texas home. But unlike the other species of this genus which are quite diminutive (averaging less than 7 inches in total length), this variety of Black-headed snake is a true giant among its kinfolk. Most adults observed are well over 1 foot in total length, and many of those are larger, up to 16 inches in total length. The record-sized individual was just under 18 inches. In fact, it is more common to see the larger specimens than it is smaller individuals: out of the dozen or so of these creatures that I have been privy to find in the wild, only one was less than 12 inches.

Despite the markedly noticeable size differences, this species is like other family members in that it is rather unassuming in appearance. The body coloration varies slightly from tan to earthy-tone brown with no distinctive markings whatsoever. The head is entirely black, as if someone took the snake and dipped its head in a can of black paint. Occasionally, some individual populations will also have a white “ring” around the neck and a splash of white between the eye and the corner of the mouth. At one time, these two “morphs” were thought to be distinct enough from one another to allow for them to be taxonomically classified as two different subspecies of the same species, but genetic work has shown that these morphs are the same. The belly is an off-white coloration, and due to the dorsal scales being small and smooth, this snake oftentimes will have a glossy sheen appearance.

As their common name suggests, the Trans-Pecos Black-headed Snake has been observed throughout many of the high-elevation, heavily vegetated mountain ranges in western Texas. It is in these mountain ranges that it finds home in the grassland milieus where the soil consistency is conducive to the allowance of easy burrowing penetration. A secondary habitat is the fractured terrain in and among the mesas of the lower Stockton Plateau. Wherever it occurs, the soil must have a certain amount of moisture to hold the required high humidity that it prefers.

As with almost all other reptiles that reside in temperate climates, they undergo a period of inactivity during the coldest months of the year, allowing sexually mature adults to generate the sperm and eggs necessary for successful reproduction in the spring. Much akin to most other harmless snakes found in Texas, Trans-Pecos Black-headed Snakes are egg-laying animals. Mating occurs primarily during the month of May, and the 1-3 extremely elongate eggs are laid a month later in areas with sufficient humidity. After an approximate two-month incubation period the delicate babies hatch, and they are between a mere 5 inches in length, typically mimic the adults in color and pattern and are capable of fending for themselves from the moment they are born.

Trans-Pecos Black-headed Snakes are primarily fossorial, spending the clear majority of their life underground or beneath surface debris. It is in this habitat where they find their primary prey items of centipedes, spiders, scorpions, and insect larvae. When rainfall is abundant, this species will become surface active, and the vast majority of surface sightings are of individuals found crossing roadways in these conditions.

This species, while infrequently encountered (even by those who are actually looking for it!) is probably not as rare as once thought. However, it is listed as a Threatened Species with the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and as such, it is protected from capture or harm.

This species is rear-fanged and has a mild toxin, but it lacks a sophisticated venom delivery system. The venom is rather weak as well, and is used for obtaining the fierce prey items rather than for defense. Therefore, like the majority of snakes that occur in this state, it is completely harmless to humans.

Michael Price is owner of Wild About Texas, an educational company that specializes in venomous animal safety training, environmental consultations and ecotourism. Contact him at wildabouttexas@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: Trans-Pecos Black-headed Snake often an underground dweller in Texas

Saudi Arabia appears to be building its own ballistic missiles with China's help, report says
Alexandra Ma
Thu, December 23, 2021

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.Saudi Royal Council via Getty Images


CNN reported that US intelligence believes Saudi Arabia is developing its own ballistic missiles.


It said intelligence found recent transfers of missile technology between China and Saudi Arabia.


Saudi Arabia has foreign-made ballistic missiles, but is not believed to have made its own before.

US intelligence agencies believe Saudi Arabia is building its own ballistic missiles with Chinese technology, CNN reported, citing people familiar with the findings.

CNN reported, citing its sources, that US intelligence showed multiple exchanges of ballistic-missile technology between the two countries.

Saudi Arabia is known to possess foreign-made ballistic missiles, but was not believed to have made its own before, CNN reported.

CNN also published satellite images showing a complex near Dawadmi, a town 200 miles from the capital Riyadh, that appeared to be manufacturing missiles.

Saudi Arabia and neighboring Iran, which also owns missiles, are bitter enemies. The US has been trying to negotiate a new agreement to halt Iran's nuclear development.

Neither the White House nor the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC, immediately responded to Insider's request for comment. The CIA declined to comment.

UCP SCREWS UP AGAIN

Northwest Alberta loses child psychiatrist as province makes shift in how doctors are paid

Paige Parsons 

© Bonnie Smith Bonnie Smith and her 14-year-old son Turner Smith. Turner lives with a rare chromosomal condition called Cri du Chat, or 5P- syndrome. His mom says seeing a psychiatrist has helped improve his quality of life.

When Turner Smith met Dr. Paul Soper, it changed the young boy's life.

Turner, now 14, lives with a rare chromosomal condition called Cri du Chat, or 5P- syndrome. In 2018, he was struggling at school with behavioural issues, like biting and aggression, and having trouble sitting and participating in class, says his mom Bonnie Smith.

Night brought sleeping difficulties, common in kids with 5P-.

"Before midnight he would move from his bed to my bed. It would turn the house upside down if he for some reason lost his way in between. There was no consistent sleep going on in the house. He was loud. He was chaotic," Smith said.

Sometimes he'd be up at 2 a.m., ready to start his day. But because he needs constant care, someone else needed to be up with him, Smith said.

But within a year of seeing Soper, a child psychiatrist based in Edmonton, things began turning around for the family from High Level, Alta., about 800 kilometres north of Edmonton.

"There was a diagnosis for him and it turned our whole life upside down," Smith said. "And then we met Dr. Soper, and once again, we're able to turn everything right side up."

But now the Alberta Health Services program that brought the two together is ending. Turner's last appointment with Soper was on Dec. 15.

 
Stipend contracts

For 14 years, Soper has spent three days a month treating children and adolescents in northwest Alberta under an AHS funding arrangement known as a stipend contract. Turner was one of about 150 youngsters on Soper's active patient list in that region.

Twelve stipend programs, including Soper's, will end on Dec. 31, as AHS works to remove a patchwork of agreements that make physician compensation inconsistent across the province, spokesperson Kerry Williamson said in an email.

Stipend programs are a holdover from when health services were provided by multiple regional authorities for care ranging from palliative services and maternity care to organ transplants and child psychiatry, according to the Alberta Medical Association (AMA).

Williamson said some stipend programs will move to a different compensation model called an alternative relationship plan, while others will be funded through the physician on-call program.

Sixty-three stipend programs will continue for limited periods while a transition is sorted out.

But a dozen programs, including Soper's, will end.

'Can't justify it anymore'

Soper said his remote work came at a cost to his family and the stipend allowed him to take time off to be at home.

"Without that, I can't justify it anymore," he said Monday.

Soper is in favour of being replaced with local specialists. To AHS's credit, he said, that's what was supposed to happen.

Soper was informed in the spring that two psychiatrists had been hired to offer services in northwest Alberta and his contract would not be renewed.

But in the summer, he learned one of the psychiatrists wasn't coming and the other, because of demand, would only see patients over age 16.

"So then I asked them again, 'Are we still going ahead with this, given that there isn't going to be anybody to replace me?' And it was on Oct. 20 that I was told for sure that mine was ending," he said.

Soper was able to refer some urgent cases to Grande Prairie. For other patients, he prepared to hand them over to pediatricians or family doctors, writing notes that detailed treatments and suggestions for next steps, along with an offer to be available by phone.

AHS is actively recruiting a new visiting child psychiatrist for the region, Williamson said.

Careful transition urged

The stipends were initially introduced to fill gaps in services available to Albertans, said AMA president Dr. Michelle Warren.

The AMA isn't opposed to ensuring pay is consistent and fair, but the 1,700-plus physicians affected by stipend program changes have concerns about how it's happening, she added.

"The problem that the AMA has had with this is that it was very much a top-down approach. So Alberta Health Services contacted the physicians and basically told them this is what was going to happen," she said.

Some AMA physicians launched a committee and have been working with the province on an alternate way to phase stipends out.

"Without a plan in place, we are going to see gaps in care," Warren said. "We are going to see those reasons that they came about in the first place rearing their heads again."

One of those gaps seems to be where Turner Smith has landed.

His mom plans to consult a pediatrician in the new year about connecting with psychiatric services, perhaps remotely.

It can be hard to get into a family doctor in the north, let alone see a specialist, and she's worried about what will happen to her son and other child psychiatry patients in the region.

"I just feel like here we go again," Smith said. "We're going to get turned upside down."

Do not give food to food banks. Give money
Tristin Hopper 

© Provided by National Post

As a fresh wave of lockdowns shuts down whole sectors of the Canadian economy, chances are good that these holidays are going to be having a lot more Canadians relying on their local food bank for sustenance. Since 2015, the National Post has greeted the yuletide season by publishing the video below. With a simple message of maximizing charitable giving by donating money to the food bank instead of canned goods, it is one of our most popular videos. It has also prompted food banks to caution us that maybe our can-bashing is a little overzealous. This is correct, but the core fact remains: With few exceptions the absolute best way that you can help feed Canada’s hungry is to give your food bank cold, fungible currency. Let us explain …

NOTE: The subtext of this article is to get you to kick some money over to food banks, not to get mad and suspend donations entirely. Please use Food Banks Canada’s food bank finder to find your nearest food bank.


The food bank is way better at buying food than you are

The author of this column is a congenitally cheap individual. I buy utility turkeys in bulk, cook them all at once and portion the meat into freezer bags to be used later. I maximize the per-ounce cost of condiments by buying them in gallon quantities. I once had an inside guy at a fruit importer who tipped me off whenever a case of bruised but usable bananas was headed for the dumpster. And yet I must still kneel in awe at a food bank’s ability to stretch a dollar. They buy in bulk, they capitalize on surpluses and they get spectacularly good deals by playing the charity card. For every $1 donated to the Calgary Food Bank, they claim to be able to buy food equivalent to $5 at retail prices. In California, some food banks claim to be able to boost that multiple to $6 . One of the most misguided charitable endeavors at this time of year is to go to the grocery store with the goal of explicitly buying food to be tossed into the workplace food hamper. Even the most skilled shopper must appreciate that however many cans of tuna they can buy, a food bank would probably have been able to buy five times as many.

© Darren Makowichuk/Calgary Sun/QMI Agency There is a zero per cent chance that former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, pictured here at a 2013 food bank drive, would be able to buy food with an efficiency coming even close to that of an established food bank.

Money doesn’t have to be sorted and stored

If you gather up $15 worth of pennies (that’s 1,500 coins) and dump it in your nearest Salvation Army kettle, the attendant Bell Ringer will smile weakly and thank you for your generosity. Once that mountain of pennies is counted, rolled, transported and deposited, however, it’s entirely possible that your donation actually resulted in a net loss for the Red Shield. A similar problem exists with food donations. Your average box of random pantry items needs to be sorted, stored and shoehorned into a family’s meal plan. While pantry items are better than no pantry items, that sorting isn’t cheap. Two years ago the Greater Vancouver Food Bank revealed that it was costing them up to $40,000 a year to sort out unwanted donations such as half-eaten bread, tinned alligator and Jello packages from the 1960s. In Nunavut, the exorbitant costs of shipping mean that a donated food parcel can end up costing a food bank way more than than the value of the food it contains. Money doesn’t have any of these pitfalls. It doesn’t go bad, it doesn’t take up space and it’s not heavy: It sits patiently in a bank account generating more money until it’s needed to buy a pallet of peanut butter or fresh vegetables.

© Postmedia File A 1990 photo of workers at the London Food Bank preparing to sort through a mountain of physical food donations.

You don’t know what the food bank needs

Have you ever shown up to a potluck where everybody brought kale salad? Food banks face a version of this problem regularly. One month they’re drowning in peanut butter but desperate for tuna, the next they’re neck deep in creamed corn and need canned vegetables. Food banks also need to keep feeding people throughout the year, which makes it a little tricky when much of their donations come in a tidal wave of cans every Christmas. According to U.S. data up to 50 per cent of food bank donations are wasted, and the primary reason is because donations do not always jibe with the food needs of a community. Food banks would be more candid about this, but they know that if they look even slightly ungrateful they could swear off a donor for life. One reader emailed the National Post with a story of dropping off a hamper of pantry items at a food bank only to be told “what we really need is crackers” by a volunteer. “I now donate elsewhere,” wrote the reader.

© Mike Hensen/The London Free Press/Postmedia Network We really can’t stress enough how much time Canadian food banks have to spend sifting through random physical food donations.

If your food bank is inefficient, throwing more inefficiency at them is a terrible plan

Food banks know that many of their donors are happy to contribute food or time, but bristle at the idea of being asked for cash. “Some food banks … spend too much money on salaries & fund-raising. We will not donate money to them,” one reader wrote to the Post in 2016. This is absolutely not true of Food Banks Canada; it has been voted by Charity Intelligence as one of the most impactful spenders of donated money in Canada. But pretend that your local food bank does indeed suffer from financial mismanagement and high overhead costs. If that’s the case, how are these problems helped by following the equally inefficient route of exclusively donating food? As noted above, a dollar spent on food hamper donations at the grocery store could have purchased five times more food in the hands of a food bank purchaser. A loss of 80 per cent in your dollar’s efficiency is a terrible price to pay for mistrust of a charity. The practice makes even less sense when you consider it being applied to other charities. If people don’t trust the Red Cross, it’s not like they assuage their suspicions by only donating bandages and cans of gasoline. Conversely, one way for food banks to get around public mistrust of cash donations is to start allowing donors to contribute to funds in which the money will only be spent on food.

Food drives have their place, but you can still consider whether it’s the best use of your resources

This column should not be taken as an all-purpose indictment of food drives. By holding them, food banks are tapping into a subset of donors. People distrustful of monetary donations, people lured by the pageantry of a “fill the bus” campaign, people strapped for cash who can only donate spare cans from the pantry. If all food drives were shut down, these donors wouldn’t start cutting cheques — they would simply leave. “We are lucky because we are one of the only charities which has three legitimate and needed ways to donate. Food, funds and time,” said Lalonde. But for donors with spare cash who aren’t too interested in the means by which they help the poor, they should absolutely consider swearing off canned good donations. An increasing number of corporate donors are already taking the hint: Instead of dropping off truckloads of food at the food bank each year, they’re now handing out the much more impactful donation of a giant cheque instead.

© John Lappa/Sudbury Star See? Just as exciting as a truckload of food.

Food isn’t tax deductible

This is probably the most important point: Nobody’s going to give you a cut on your income taxes because you lobbed a few bouillon cubes into a cardboard box at the office. Not so with monetary donations. On the first $200 a Canadian donates to charity each year, 15 per cent of that is tax deductible. If you go above the $200 threshold in a given year, that rate jumps to 30 per cent . To review: If you hand your food bank a 30 pound office hamper filled with random food, you’re handing over a miniature logistical challenge that may or may not end up on the table of a hungry family. Hand over $20, and the food bank will be able to buy $100 worth of food, they’ll save on processing costs and Ottawa will kick you back up to $6.

In Africa, rescuing the languages that Western tech ignores

By MATT O'BRIEN and CHINEDU ASADU

In this photo taken Wednesday Nov 24, 2021, Kola Tubosun, is photograph in his house in Lagos, Nigeria. Computers have become amazingly precise at translating spoken words to text messages and scouring huge troves of information for answers to complex questions. At least, that is, so long as you speak English or another of the world's dominant languages. But try talking to your phone in Yoruba, Igbo or any number of widely spoken African languages and you'll find glitches that can hinder access to information, trade, personal communications, customer service and other benefits of the global tech economy. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)


LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Computers have become amazingly precise at translating spoken words to text messages and scouring huge troves of information for answers to complex questions. At least, that is, so long as you speak English or another of the world’s dominant languages.

But try talking to your phone in Yoruba, Igbo or any number of widely spoken African languages and you’ll find glitches that can hinder access to information, trade, personal communications, customer service and other benefits of the global tech economy.

“We are getting to the point where if a machine doesn’t understand your language it will be like it never existed,” said Vukosi Marivate, chief of data science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, in a call to action before a December virtual gathering of the world’s artificial intelligence researchers.

American tech giants don’t have a great track record of making their language technology work well outside the wealthiest markets, a problem that’s also made it harder for them to detect dangerous misinformation on their platforms.

Marivate is part of a coalition of African researchers who have been trying to change that. Among their projects is one that found machine translation tools failed to properly translate online COVID-19 surveys from English into several African languages.

“Most people want to be able to interact with the rest of the information highway in their local language,” Marivate said in an interview. He’s a founding member of Masakhane, a pan-African research project to improve how dozens of languages are represented in the branch of AI known as natural language processing. It’s the biggest of a number of grassroots language technology projects that have popped up from the Andes to Sri Lanka.

Tech giants offer their products in numerous languages, but they don’t always pay attention to the nuances necessary for those apps work in the real world. Part of the problem is that there’s just not enough online data in those languages — including scientific and medical terms — for the AI systems to effectively learn how to get better at understanding them.

Google, for instance, offended members of the Yoruba community several years ago when its language app mistranslated Esu, a benevolent trickster god, as the devil. Facebook’s language misunderstandings have been tied to political strife around the world and its inability to tamp down harmful misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. More mundane translation glitches have been turned into joking online memes.

Omolewa Adedipe has grown frustrated trying to share her thoughts on Twitter in the Yoruba language because her automatically translated tweets usually end up with different meanings.

One time, the 25-year-old content designer tweeted, “T’Ílù ò bà dùn, T’Ílù ò bà t’òrò. Èyin l’ęmò bí ę şe şé,” which means, “If the land (or country, in this context) is not peaceful, or merry, you’re responsible for it.” Twitter, however, managed to end up with the translation: “If you are not happy, if you are not happy.”

For complex Nigerian languages like Yoruba, those accent marks -- often associated with tones -- make all the difference in communication. ‘Ogun’, for instance, is a Yoruba word that means war, but it can also mean a state in Nigeria (Ògùn), god of iron (Ògún), stab (Ógún), twenty or property (Ogún).

“Some of the bias is deliberate given our history,” said Marivate, who has devoted some of his AI research to the southern African languages of Xitsonga and Setswana spoken by his family members, as well as to the common conversational practice of “code-switching” between languages.

“The history of the African continent and in general in colonized countries, is that when language had to be translated, it was translated in a very narrow way,” he said. “You were not allowed to write a general text in any language because the colonizing country might be worried that people communicate and write books about insurrections or revolutions. But they would allow religious texts.”

Google and Microsoft are among the companies that say they are trying to improve technology for so-called “low-resource” languages that AI systems don’t have enough data for. Computer scientists at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, announced in November a breakthrough on the path to a “universal translator” that could translate multiple languages at once and work better with lower-resourced languages such as Icelandic or Hausa.

That’s an important step, but at the moment, only large tech companies and big AI labs in developed countries can build these models, said David Ifeoluwa Adelani. He’s a researcher at Saarland University in Germany and another member of Masakhane, which has a mission to strengthen and spur African-led research to address technology “that does not understand our names, our cultures, our places, our history.”

Improving the systems requires not just more data but careful human review from native speakers who are underrepresented in the global tech workforce. It also requires a level of computing power that can be hard for independent researchers to access.

Writer and linguist Kola Tubosun created a multimedia dictionary for the Yoruba language and also created a text-to-speech machine for the language. He is now working on similar speech recognition technologies for Nigeria’s two other major languages, Hausa and Igbo, to help people who want to write short sentences and passages.

“We are funding ourselves,” he said. “The aim is to show these things can be profitable.”

Tubosun led the team that created Google’s “Nigerian English” voice and accent used in tools like maps. But he said it remains difficult to raise the money needed to build technology that might allow a farmer to use a voice-based tool to follow market or weather trends.

In Rwanda, software engineer Remy Muhire is helping to build a new open-source speech dataset for the Kinyarwanda language that involves a lot of volunteers recording themselves reading Kinyarwanda newspaper articles and other texts.

“They are native speakers. They understand the language,” said Muhire, a fellow at Mozilla, maker of the Firefox internet browser. Part of the project involves a collaboration with a government-supported smartphone app that answers questions about COVID-19. To improve the AI systems in various African languages, Masakhane researchers are also tapping into news sources across the continent, including Voice of America’s Hausa service and the BBC broadcast in Igbo.

Increasingly, people are banding together to develop their own language approaches instead of waiting for elite institutions to solve problems, said Damián Blasi, who researches linguistic diversity at the Harvard Data Science Initiative.

Blasi co-authored a recent study that analyzed the uneven development of language technology across the world’s more than 6,000 languages. For instance, it found that while Dutch and Swahili both have tens of millions of speakers, there are hundreds of scientific reports on natural language processing in the Western European language and only about 20 in the East African one.

___

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

ARYAN SUPREMACY

No place to pray: Muslim worshippers under pressure in India

Several states have brought in legislation criminalising conversion to Christianity and Islam, including through marriage -- or "love jihad" as Hindu hardliners call it (AFP/Sajjad HUSSAIN)

Jalees ANDRABI
Thu, December 23, 2021, 

Dinesh Bharti drives around with other activists on Fridays heckling and harassing Muslims praying outside in Gurgaon, the latest flashpoint of sectarian tensions under India's Hindu nationalist government.

Muslims praying in the open "create problems in the country and the entire world," the thickset Hindu man in his 40s said, a red tilak on his forehead marking him out as a devout member of India's majority religion.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election in 2014 emboldened hardline groups who see India as a Hindu nation and its 200 million-strong Muslim minority as potentially dangerous outsiders.

Gurgaon is a modern satellite city of the capital New Delhi. Around 500,000 Muslims either live there, have migrated to the area for work or labour there during the day.

The city has 15 mosques for them, but the local government has refused permission to build more -- even as the number of Hindu temples has grown.

This has forced the community to hold Friday afternoon prayers -- the most important of the week for Muslims -- in open spaces.

In recent years, Hindu groups have sprayed cow dung at Islamic prayer sites and called worshippers terrorists and Pakistanis -- referencing India's Muslim-majority neighbour and arch-rival.

The local government, meanwhile, has steadily cut the number of approved outdoor worship sites.

- 'No longer tolerated' -

Earlier this month, the Haryana state chief minister, a member of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, declared that outdoor prayers in Gurgaon "will no longer be tolerated".

Undermining their argument that religion can be practised only indoors, Hindu groups celebrated last Friday by setting up a makeshift temple and community kitchen to feed hundreds as devotional music blared.

Across town, hundreds of Muslims queued to take turns to worship at one of only six remaining prayer venues still available.

At another site, Muslims were heckled and forced to chant slogans such as "Hail Lord Ram" -- a Hindu deity -- that have proliferated under Modi among his supporters.

"If the government doesn't find a solution to the issue... it will become more complicated and serious," Sabir Qasmi, a Muslim cleric at the prayer meeting, told AFP.

- Lifelong hardliner -

Modi is a lifelong member of the hardline Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Hindu nationalist group.

He was briefly barred from the United States over religious riots in Gujarat in 2002 when he was state chief minister.

Since his coming to power, a string of lynchings of Muslims by Hindu mobs for so-called cow protection -- a sacred animal for many Hindus -- and other hate crimes has sown fear and despair in the community.

Several states have brought in legislation criminalising conversion to Christianity and Islam, including through marriage -- or "love jihad" as Hindu hardliners call it.

This week, a video emerged from a recent gathering of right-wing Hindu groups in which some delegates called for Muslims to be killed, reports said.

Hindu protesters in Gurgaon say outdoor prayers pose a "security" risk, cause traffic problems and prevent children from playing cricket.

But critics say the real reason is simply that Muslims have no place in Modi's new intolerant India, where Hindu zealots are dictating government policy.

Arati R. Jerath, a political commentator, said there is an agenda to convert India from a pluralistic and secular nation into a "Hindu country".

"Whether it is economic spaces or spaces for worship, or spaces for the food and customs or anything with a Muslim identity, that is going to be part of the project," Jerath told AFP.

"It is not necessarily a government-sponsored project, but certainly a project by the supporters of this government, who... get tacit support from the government."

On Sunday, the head of a Hindu umbrella group proposed a solution: Muslims should convert.

"They will have their temples to pray and this (prayer) issue will end," said Mahaveer Bhardwaj, chairman of the Sanyukt Sangharsh Samiti.

ja/stu/gle/qan

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

  

Iowa's second derecho in two years spawned 43 tornadoes. Here's how the storm compared to others


Philip Joens, Des Moines Register
Thu, December 23, 2021

Officials have determined at least 43 tornadoes resulted from the Dec. 15 derecho that swept across Iowa — more than seven times the total number of tornadoes to take shape in December in Iowa since 1950, and the most tornadoes in any single day in the state's historical record.

As data from last week's storm — the first December derecho in U.S. history — continues to be processed, its historic nature becomes clearer. The storm will go down as the worst late-fall or winter thunderstorm in Iowa's recorded history, said Mike Fowle, the science and operations officer at the National Weather Service in Des Moines. It could also rank as one of the worst severe thunderstorms ever recorded in Iowa, regardless of season, he said.

Between 1950 and 2020, only six tornadoes were ever recorded in December in Iowa, according to the NWS. All of them were recorded in southeastern Iowa. Of Dec. 15's 43, 17 were identified as EF2s, with wind gusts of at least 111 mph.

Iowa's previous single-day record of 35 tornadoes was set on Aug. 31, 2014. And meteorologists with the NWS say more tornadoes resulting from the Dec. 15 storm could still be confirmed.

"In the modern era, we haven't seen anything like this in at least the last 75 years," Fowle said. "This is going to be in the upper-echelon of events — anytime you talk 'historic,' you talk the top 5-10% of events."

Iowa wasn't alone in seeing action on Dec. 15: At least 92 tornadoes have been confirmed across Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to the NWS. Twenty-seven were confirmed in Nebraska alone.

Meteorologists say a perfect mix created a cocktail ready to produce severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that day. Warm air from the Gulf of Mexico met a powerful low-pressure system as it raced from the central Rocky Mountains, northeast through the Plains and into the Great Lakes, said Peter Rogers, a meteorologist at the NWS in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Normally in the late fall, warm air from the Gulf of Mexico meets with cold air in the Midwest, reducing the chances for thunderstorms, according to the weather service's storm prediction center.

Des Moines and Waterloo both smashed high-temperature records on Dec. 15, too, with highs of 74 degrees, which handily beat the cities' previous records of 69 and 67 degrees, respectively. Oskaloosa, Muscatine, Iowa City and Ottumwa all set a new record high for the month in Iowa — which was 74 degrees, set on Dec. 6, 1939, in southwest Iowa's Thurman — with highs of 75 degrees.

"Warmer air can hold more moisture, and the more moisture you have available has the potential to increase the severity of storms," Rogers said. "All of that came together at a very odd time of year."

Numerous agricultural buildings sustained severe damage last week, according to damage reports. Vehicles were overturned and some houses had their roofs taken off. Numerous trees and power lines were also damaged.

A tornado hit the middle of Rudd, in the state's northeast corner, heavily damaging a church and library. The tornado that hit Aurelia, in northwest Iowa, caused the most damage out of the 10 in that corner of the state when it tipped over rail cars, collapsed a hog barn and caused other damage, Rogers said.

Cleanup at the public library in Rudd, Iowa, began on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, after a confirmed EF-1 tornado touched down on the town of 359 residents Wednesday night, leaving multiple homes damaged. The storm was part of a band of severe weather that raked across much of Iowa Wednesday night.

But population centers like Council Bluffs, Carroll and Sioux City narrowly escaped significant damage. A tornado was confirmed in Sergeant Bluff, just south of Sioux City, and tornadoes touched down on opposite ends of Jefferson, Fowle said; a tornado also landed just west of Atlantic and another clipped a corner of Grand Junction, he said.

No fatalities or injuries were recorded from any of the touchdowns in Iowa, a fact that has astonished meteorologists, although a semitrailer driver was killed in Benton County, west of Cedar Rapids, when a non-tornadic gust of wind hit his truck and caused it to roll over. In total, five deaths were blamed on the derecho across all states.

Many of the tornadoes were narrow, which minimized the destruction, Fowle said. But there were also several long tornadoes: Four were on the ground for more than 20 miles, the longest being an EF2 tornado that hit Belmond and Meservey and was on the ground for 28 miles. Eleven were on the ground for more than 10 miles.

A tornado approaches Interstate 80 near Atlantic, Iowa, as a semi rolls eastward on Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. This tornado was an EF2 tornado, was on the ground for 26.1 miles had peak wind speeds of 115 to 120 mph.

"Thankfully, the footprint of these towns is fairly small," Fowle said. "In our forecast area, we pretty much missed a direct hit on any town."

Since 1950, the number of days in which tornadoes form across Iowa has diminished, State Climatologist Justin Glisan said. But days with tornado outbreaks are increasing, Glisan said.

On July 14, 26 tornadoes hit Iowa in what was, at the time, the third-largest single-day tornado outbreak since record-keeping began. Iowa had "basically a lack of severe weather" outside these two storms, Glisan said.

Thunderstorms are an important source of precipitation. Yet most of Iowa was mired in a drought for the second straight year.

"That's reflected in the drought conditions," Glisan said. "No thunderstorms. No rainfall."

Parts of eastern Iowa are still considered to be in moderate droughts.

Two derechos in two years

Forecasters expect Iowa to get hit by a derecho once every two years, Glisan said. Prior to last year's derecho, the last to hit the state was in 2014. A total of 13 derechos have been recorded in Iowa since 1980, Glisan said.

"To have derechos within two years of this intensity" is rare, he confirmed.

Last August's derecho traveled 770 miles as straight-line winds decimated crops and shattered homes in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin. It caused more than $11.5 billion in damage. To date, it is still the most costly thunderstorm in U.S. history.

Last week's serial derecho, a type of derecho produced by thunderstorms with strong winds which bow outward, traveled at least 550 miles through Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin, Fowle said.

The 2020 derecho was a progressive derecho, a type of storm fueled by a hot and moist environment with relatively strong winds. Serial derechos typically sweep across wide and long paths. Progressive derechos are typically associated with shorter lines of thunderstorms that travel along narrower paths.

The 2020 derecho was stronger than the Dec. 15 event, producing peak wind gusts of around 140 mph. The strongest gust recorded last week was 88 mph in Audubon.

But winds not associated with thunderstorms — behind this system — were stronger, Glisan said.

"If you drew a line from the southwest corner through the northeast corner, all the tornado warnings and tornado reports were northwest of that line," he said.

There were 118 severe thunderstorm and 71 tornado warnings across Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa from a powerful thunderstorm system on Wed. Dec. 15, 2021 and Thurs. Dec. 16, 2021.

As the front moved across Iowa, it started to bow out in the southern part of the state. The tornados all happened north of that bowing and spared the southeast part of the state, Glisan said.

"Basically, the line had storm motion to the northeast, Glisan said. "You had very strong ambient large-scale winds out of the south, so you had friction along that line and that's where you get those spin-up tornadoes."

'We're seeing these conditions co-mingle'

Southeast Iowa was forecast to see above-average temperatures this winter because this is the second straight winter with a La Nina weather pattern, or a natural cooling of sea water in the Pacific Ocean. La Ninas favor warmer-than-average temperatures and below-average precipitation in the southeastern U.S., and colder-than-average temperatures and above-average precipitation in the northwest.

But as the climate warms, extreme weather is happening more often in Iowa, Glisan said. The number of days with environments conducive for making severe weather are increasing because more water vapor is available, he said.

In recent years, Iowa has seen flooding caused by higher-intensity rainfall coupled simultaneously with or in years opposite of droughts. While 2018 was the second-wettest year in 149 years of record-keeping, for example, a drought also gripped southeastern Iowa.

"We're seeing these conditions co-mingle," Glisan said.

The Dec. 15 outbreak followed another late on Dec. 10 and early on Dec. 11 that swept across Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois and killed 91 people, according to USA TODAY. An EF4 tornado with wind speeds of 190 mph and more than a mile wide traveled on the ground for 166 miles, decimating Mayfield, Kentucky. Another EF3 tornado with winds of 160 mph in the same system was on the ground for 123 miles.

"I would greatly take these types of tornadoes (seen in Iowa on Dec. 15) versus the supercells on the Dec. 10 event," Glisan said. "Those long-track supercells are scary, scary things."

The two systems were the result of four "heat pulses" to hit the U.S. this month, according to Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist for the Washington Post. Record highs were set in four states during the first pulse, on Dec. 1 and 2. The fourth is expected to settle across the southwest U.S. on Friday, according to Cappucci.

Friday and Saturday's highs in Des Moines, expected to be 54 and 43 degrees, respectively, would be well above the average high of 33 degrees for Dec. 24 and Dec. 25.

"It reinforces the connection between human-induced climate change and the incidence of warm temperatures in the wintertime," Cappucci wrote. "Heat extremes have outpaced cold records at a rate greater than 2 to 1 this year, and the holidays are a time of year when that warming is especially pronounced."

Eventually, Des Moines is expected to see the more typical cold and snowy weather associated with the season, Glisan said.

"February is becoming the problem child month," Glisan said. "We get those cold-air outbreaks, but also higher snow potential."

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: 43 Iowa tornadoes confirmed from 'historic' December derecho, NWS says

Texas governor doesn't pardon George Floyd after parole board withdraws recommendation


Rebecca Falconer

AXIOS
Thu, December 23, 2021

George Floyd will not be posthumously pardoned for a 2004 Houston drug charge because the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles withdrew its recommendation, the Dallas Morning News first reported Thursday.

Driving the news: The board had recommended a full pardon for Floyd for the charge, for which he served 10 months in prison. A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) told the Morning News that recommendation "contained procedural errors" and said there had been a "lack of compliance with Board rules."

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"As a result of the Board's withdrawal of the recommendation concerning George Floyd, Governor Abbott did not have the opportunity to consider it," the spokesperson added.

The big picture: Floyd, whose murder by a former Minneapolis police officer sparked global anti-racism protests last year, was arrested during a Houston police sting operation for selling $10 worth of crack, per AP.

The officer who arrested him, Gerald Goines, is facing two murder charges and has been accused of lying to justify warrants over a 2019 drug raid.

The Harris County Public Defender's office alleged Goines fabricated a confidential informant in Floyd's case.

What they're saying: Allison Mathis, a Houston public defender who applied for a posthumous pardon for Floyd, told the Morning News the recommendation withdrawal was "outrageous."

"Greg Abbott and his political appointees have let their politics triumph over the right thing to do and what is clearly is justice," Mathis said.

"I expected an up or a down vote. I did not expect this kind of misconduct."

Texas board withdraws pardon recommendation for George Floyd

E- A button that reads "I can't breathe," adorns the jacket of a mourner before the funeral for George Floyd on Tuesday, June 9, 2020, in Houston. Political observers are watching whether Texas' governor will posthumously pardon Floyd for a 2004 arrest before the end of the year.

 (Godofredo A. Vásquez/Houston Chronicle via AP, Pool, File)More

PAUL J. WEBER
Thu, December 23, 2021

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas board that had unanimously supported a posthumous pardon for George Floyd over a 2004 drug arrest in Houston backpedaled in an announcement Thursday, saying “procedural errors" were found in their recommendation months after leaving the decision to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

The unusual reversal was announced by Abbott's office two days before Christmas, around the time he typically doles out his annual pardons.

The withdrawn endorsement was met with outrage from a public defender who submitted the pardon application for Floyd, who spent much of his life in Houston before his death in 2020 under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. Allison Mathis, an attorney in Houston, accused the two-term governor of playing politics ahead of Texas' March GOP primary elections as he faces challengers from the far right.

Floyd's name was withdrawn along with two dozen other clemency recommendations that had been submitted by the Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles. In a letter dated Dec. 16 but not released publicly until now, the board told Abbott that it had identified “unexplained departures” from its process of issuing pardons and needed to reconsider more than a third of the 67 clemency recommendations it sent to Abbott this year, including the one for Floyd.

 


In October, the board had unanimously recommended that Floyd become just the second person in Texas since 2010 to receive a posthumous pardon from the governor.

“As a result of the Board’s withdrawal of the recommendation concerning George Floyd, Governor Abbott did not have the opportunity to consider it,” Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a statement.

Mathis called the last-minute reversal a “ridiculous farce." She said the board — which is stocked with Abbott appointees — did not make her aware of any issues prior to the announcement from the governor's office.

“It really strains credibility for them to say now that it's out of compliance, after the board has already voted on it,” she said.

Floyd grew up and was laid to rest in Houston. In June, former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for Floyd's murder, which led to a national reckoning in the U.S. over race and policing.

Pardons restore the rights of the convicted and forgive them in the eyes of the law. But in Floyd’s case, his family and supporters said a posthumous pardon in Texas would show a commitment to accountability.

In February 2004, Floyd was arrested in Houston for selling $10 worth of crack in a police sting, and later pleaded guilty to a drug charge and served 10 months in prison. But the global spotlight on the death of Floyd in police custody 16 years later is not why prosecutors revisited his Houston case. Instead, it was prompted by a deadly Houston drug raid in 2019 that involved the same officer who arrested Floyd.

Prosecutors say that officer, Gerald Goines, lied to obtain the search warrant for the raid that killed a husband and wife. Goines, who is no longer on the Houston force and faces murder charges, has denied wrongdoing. More than 160 drug convictions tied to him over the years have since been dismissed by prosecutors due to concerns about his casework.

David Gutierrez, chairman of Texas' parole board, said in the letter to Abbott that he ordered a review after the board had recommended more clemency recommendations this year than at any point in two decades. He did not specify how Floyd's recommendation skirted the usual procedures, instead only broadly pointing to several sets of rules that Gutierrez said the board did not follow.

A number listed for Gutierrez was not answered Thursday.

For months, Abbott gave no indication whether he would grant the pardon in the months since the parole board put the recommendation on his desk. The prolonged silence raised questions by Mathis and others over whether political calculations were at play in Abbott's decision. His office has not respond to those charges.

Abbott attended Floyd's memorial service last year in Houston, where he met with the family and floated the idea of a "George Floyd Act" that would take aim at police brutality. But when the Texas Legislature convened months later, Abbott was silent over policing reforms pushed by Democrats and made police funding a priority.
___

Find AP’s full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd

People Are Sharing Their Jobs And Exact Salaries, And It's Super Eye-Opening


Wed, December 22, 2021

Last week, I wrote a post about people sharing their job titles and exact salaries. I love the transparency of it all, and so did our BuzzFeed Community. Commenters came through and shared their own jobs and salaries.

Jamie Grill / Getty Images/Tetra images RF

So...here's what people said:

1.Travel Nurse:

"I make $120 to $150/hr. When I was a staff nurse, my pay was $35 to $38/hr.

—anthonymarquez222

2.Heavy Haul Truck Driver:

"I haul wind turbines, aircraft wings, engines. I made $847,689.23 so far this year. After taxes, fuel permits, and escorts, this year I take home $326,000 more or less."

—marquianlackland

Blake Little / Getty Images

3.Change Management Consultant:

"3+ yrs of relevant but not exact prior experience at Big Four firm: $75,000."

—alliewolf67

4.Clinical Counselor at an Immigration Shelter:

"I'm making about $57,000 a year, but currently have hazard pay, so I'm at 67,000 at the moment."

—allysonflores

5.Registered Nurse in Trauma Operating Room:

"We get all the car accident, gun shot, and stab wounds. I make $110,000 a year. It can be a little hectic but i love helping others, and it’s fascinating watching/assisting a surgeon save someone’s life!"

—paulakristine

Sam Edwards / Getty Images

6.Data Analyst/Statistician at a Finance Company:

"I make about $95,000 base and $15,000 bonus at a large company."

—millennialnerd10

7.Art Designer:

"I went to art school, and my whole family was like, 'What are you gonna do with that degree?' I’m a designer for a top media company and make $120,000 a year, full benefits, a ton of paid time off, and a plethora of perks. Support your artist family members!"

—creativelyj

8.Life Insurance Agent:

"$80,000 to $100,000, first year. Residual income around $10,000 to $15,000 per month after 10 years if you’re average."

—daltonbeam

9.Fundraising Director at a Small Nonprofit:

"I make $48,000 a year with no benefits."

—zucchiniomelette

10.Social Worker:

"I chose the wrong career — $41,000 a year for a social worker with a master's degree."

—chiromommy2130

11.Volleyball Coach:

"I’ve been coaching for about 5 years and coach multiple high-level teams and make the cost for one player's season, per team (about $2,000) from December to May. This includes two practices a week, per team, and tournaments at least every other weekend. I also do private lessons and make from $30-75/hour, depending on the amount of people I’m training. The pay isn’t great, but it’s something I’m extremely passionate about."

—kumiho

Fatcamera / Getty Images

12.Online Course Builder:

"I make $65,000 a year."

—dylanscottl

13.Engineering Documentation:

"I'm not an engineer, but I do all the documentation in the engineering department at my job. I make $71,500 a year."

—sothias

14.Marketing Specialist:

"Mid-Missouri, rural area, marketing specialist of 3 years. $36,000."

—cassjbruce

15.Medical Assistant:

"Worked as an MA for a family practice in Utah. After tax and benefits, I made just over $20,000 a year. I left for a call center and make almost $37,000 a year. My degree and student loans are worthless."

—esamor

Luis Alvarez / Getty Images

16.Public Relations Advisor for Oil and Gas Industry:

"Gross $81,000/year, plus about $12,000 in annual bonus, full benefits, and 401k match."

—lrc111111

17.Elementary School Teacher:

"I make $48,000. Severely underpaid for what we deal with."

—kenta42e4995b4

18.Office Manager for Utility Company:

"$65,000 a year."

—anlha

19.Retail Pharmacist:

"Base pay is $118,000/year, but I have the option of picking up extra shifts for overtime. Last year, with overtime I earned $125,000."

—yellowbuggy15

Ariel Skelley / Getty Images

20.Athletic Trainer in a Health System:

"$55,000 a year."

—hillarywillson

21.Biology Teacher:

"$48,000 in Mississippi."

—alliewolf67

So, now it's your turn (if you feel comfortable)! Let me know in the comments below what your job title is and how much money you make doing so.

Responses edited for length/clarity.