WATCH: Why Haiti's Women's Soccer Team Qualifying For World Cup Gives Country Hope

By NowThis

Published on 7/20/2023 at 6:11 PM

For the first time, Haiti’s women's national soccer team qualified for the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, a victory that symbolizes hope for the country.

Climate activists try to block tree removal in Seattle

 

(21 Jul 2023) Climate activists in Seattle are taking residence in shifts on an old thick cedar tree to protest its removal. They're trying to save a tree they say could be 200 years old.

(AP Video: Manuel Valdes)

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Snoqualmie Tribe says Wedgwood protest is about more than one tree

• Paige Browning
• John O'Brien

July 21, 2023 /

1 OF 5 Cecile Hansen, chair of the Duwamish Tribal Council, attends a gratitude gathering for Luma, a roughly 200-year-old culturally modified cedar tree at risk of being cut down for a development project, on Tuesday, July 18, 2023, in the Wedgwood neighborhood of Seattle.

KUOW Photo/Megan Farmer

Reports started circulating last Friday that an activist had climbed and camped out in a giant tree in Seattle's Wedgwood neighborhood. A developer planned to remove the approximately 150-year-old Western redcedar to make way for a multi-unit housing project.

Over the last week, crowds of tree-loving community members joined the protest. Jaime Martin is the executive director of governmental affairs and special projects for the Snoqualmie Tribe. She spoke to KUOW’s Paige Browning about the significance of this and other area trees.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Paige Browning: What is your understanding of why removal was approved for this tree, one of the relatively few left in the Seattle area of this stature?

Jaime Martin: Yeah, it's perplexing. Honestly, I've spoken with multiple tree service providers that are registered in the city. And they've also remarked that they were surprised that it was permitted for removal. It's healthy. It's a gorgeous tree. It's on the very edge of the lot, so it's not impeding building from happening in a responsible way.

A lot of folks are not familiar with Culturally Modified Trees, or CMTs. And really, the only way to become aware of them is to make sure that there's proper tribal consultation prior to a project being permitted so that tribes — Snoqualmie and others in the area — can make sure that something like a CMT is not being impacted. In this case, it appears the city did no assessments, and did not consult with any tribes on this issue. That has resulted in very unfortunate projects being permitted by the city.

Can you say more about what CMTs are?

CMTs are often in this area. They're redcedars and sometimes other tree species. They can be found all across the Pacific Northwest, all the way from Alaska to Northern California. In this region, there are a few characteristics that they tend to have. Sometimes you can see a spot where a tribe harvested cedar bark from the side of trees. This is done in a way that's very sustainable and is a traditional practice where the bark can be removed in a way that the tree still lives. And then the bark can be used for things like weaving.

Some of the other characteristics you see on culturally modified trees are bent branches that are indicating various types of information. Sometimes it's communicating something like a directional sense even, so kind of like a living signpost, if you will.

Was there knowledge ahead of time that this particular Western redcedar was culturally modified?

Not to my knowledge, although this area, the Wedgwood neighborhood of northeast Seattle, was only developed in the late 30s and 40s. The area was heavily used by tribes before that. So there were some sites in the area, there were trails, and so it's known as an area that is where CMTs are prevalent.

The developers in the area, in the 1940s, purposefully retained these trees because they saw their value. They're really beautiful. They provide so many ecological benefits, and they really make the neighborhood the neighborhood that it is. So it's not necessarily that this particular tree was known to be a CMT, but there are CMTs prevalent in the area.

More people are learning now about culturally modified significant trees because of this one redcedar in Wedgwood. Can you tell me what exactly the Snoqualmie Tribe is asking of the Seattle City Council and the mayor now?

We're asking the mayor to issue an executive order that would basically direct staff to halt the implementation of the new tree ordinance that goes into effect on July 30. This would give us time to make sure that there's proper and meaningful tribal consultation that occurs, and that CMTs and other cultural resources that would be impacted by that tree ordinance can be included in that language before it goes into effect.

City of Seattle officials told us today that the Department of Construction and Inspections does not have the legal authority to revoke the permit to cut down the tree, as it already approved the permit to construct three housing units on the site where the redcedar sits.

Why the U.S. sending cluster weapons to Ukraine is divisive

Fifty years after the last bombs were dropped on Laos, unexploded cluster munitions continue to be dangerous making the U.S. decision to send cluster weapons to Ukraine controversial. Read more: https://wapo.st/3rzUV83.

 

WATCH: Pink Dolphin Spotted in Louisiana Waters

By NowThis

Published on 7/20/2023 

 

A rare pink dolphin was caught on camera by a fisherman in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, on July 12. Experts say the pink dolphin is likely an albino bottlenose dolphin

The Sea Otter Harassing Surfers off the California Coast Eludes Capture As Her Fan Club Grows

Jessica Fujii, Sea Otter Program Manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said the team has faced some challenges in its pursuit, including bad weather.

By NowThis

Published on 7/20/2023 

This image from video provided by TMX shows an encounter between a female otter and a surfer off the coast of Santa Cruz, Calif., on Sunday, July 9, 2023. California wildlife officials are trying to capture and rehome the otter. (Hefti Brunhold/Amazing Animals+/TMX via AP)

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) — A sea otter launched into the national spotlight after images of her aggressively wresting surfboards away from surfers off the coast of Santa Cruz, California circulated on social media is building a fan club as she continues to evade capture.

A team of wildlife experts with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the nearby Monterey Bay Aquarium have been trying to capture the 5-year-old animal, known as otter 841, since last week because they say she poses a public safety risk.

They say they want to examine her and relocate her at a zoo or aquarium —as yet to no avail.
She now has a growing fan club, with people showing up every day to get a glimpse of her spending time sunbathing on the rocky shore, diving in the water and chomping down on crabs.

Jessica Fujii, Sea Otter Program Manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said the team has faced some challenges in its pursuit, including bad weather.

“The main issue is more just her ability to evade. Because this has been an ongoing effort, she is wary of those nets," Fujii said.

Federal and state wildlife officials did not return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment Thursday on their effort to catch otter 841.

The mischievous mammal was made famous by a professional photographer who posted photos and videos on social media that show her aggressively approaching surfers and getting on top of surfboards — on at least one occasion biting and tearing chunks off a board.

“They can’t throw a net over her in the water. They can’t tranquilize her because of fear of her drowning. So they really need to get hands on her," said the Santa Cruz photographer, Mark Woodward.

The team trying to capture her has used a baited surfboard. She’s gotten on it multiple times in the past few days, according to Woodward. But as soon as a wildlife official towing the surfboard carrying her gets near the team's boat, she dives off, he said.

The otter’s aggressive behavior is highly unusual, and the reason is unknown, federal wildlife officials said.

“Aggressive behavior in female southern sea otters may be associated with hormonal surges or due to being fed by humans,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement last week.

Otter 841 was born in captivity and released into the wild in June 2020. She is tagged with her number and has a radio transmitter that officials have been monitoring to keep tabs on her.

They said it is not the first time the otter has been aggressive toward humans. She was observed approaching people in late 2021. In May 2022, she was spotted with a pup in the Santa Cruz area, and four months later exhibited similar aggressive behavior.

Meanwhile, her fans want her to be left alone.

“Just leave ‘em alone. Just let ’em have fun. Hasn’t bitten anybody. Roughs up the board. It’s like a dog with a chew, you know?” said Jackie Rundell, a Santa Cruz resident who on Wednesday visited the bay.

Southern sea otters, whose population dwindled to about 50 in 1938, are managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service. They are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and are protected under the Marine Mammal Act and California state law.

Now with a population of about 3,000, sea otters play a fundamental role in maintaining healthy coastal ecosystems by preying on sea urchins that can multiply and eat their way through the kelp forests both marine creatures share, wildlife officials said.

___

By HAVEN DALEY and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ

Former Street-Food Salesgirl Shaking Up Mexico's Presidential Race

July 22, 2023
Associated Press

Senator Xochitl Galvez, an opposition presidential hopeful, speaks to the press after registering her name as a candidate in Mexico City, July 4, 2023.

A street-food salesgirl who became a tech entrepreneur and senator is shaking up the contest to succeed Mexico's popular president and offering many voters the first real alternative to her country's dominant party.

Xóchitl Gálvez, 60, helped her family as a girl by selling tamales on the street. Today the straight-talking opposition senator is a long shot against Andrés Manuel López Obrador's Morena party, which holds Congress and 22 of Mexico's 32 states.

Despite her slim chances, Gálvez seems to have shaken the president so badly that he's been insulting her almost daily during his morning briefings. The opposition senator comfortably sits in the national spotlight nearly a year ahead of the June 2, 2024 national election.

"She fills a space that was completely empty," said Roy Campos, president of polling firm Mitofsky Group. "All of the opposition population starts to see her and it generates hope."

Next year's election is López Obrador's chance to show if he has built a political movement that can outlast his charismatic leadership. Whoever his successor is, they will have to tackle persistently high levels of violence, heavily armed drug cartels and migration across the nearly 2,000-mile border with the United States.

Campos's group has not conducted an opposition candidate survey but that doesn't prevent him from feeling comfortable declaring Gálvez a "political phenomenon."

A political independent who initially set her sights on competing to be Mexico City mayor and often travels the sprawling capital on a bicycle, Gálvez entered the Senate chamber in December dressed as a dinosaur, an allusion to party leaders known known for their archaic, unmovable practices. At the time, López Obrador had proposed electoral reforms that critics said would weaken the country's National Electoral Institute. The Senate passed them earlier this year, but the Supreme Court later blocked them from taking effect.

A Mexican flag waves in front of The National Palace, the office of the president, in Mexico City's main square, the Zocalo, at sunrise, April 24, 2023.

Gálvez never shies from conflict with López Obrador. She went to a judge in December asking for an order to let her speak at the president's daily press briefing. She was granted the order, but the president rejected it.

Gálvez's fluid use of profanity, contrasting with her comfort moving in political circles, is an advantage with much of the working class, and with many young Mexicans. She registered this month to compete for the presidential nomination of a broad opposition coalition — the historically leftist PRD, the conservative PAN and the PRI that ruled Mexico for 70 years — joking that López Obrador was her campaign manager.

López Obrador remains highly popular, and while he cannot run for another six-year term, several high-profile members of his Morena party have been jockeying fiercely for months. They include Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard and Interior Secretary Adan Augusto, who all agreed to resign their positions last month to campaign in earnest.

Their faces are plastered on billboards across the country, while Gálvez makes clever videos often shot with her own iPhone, some viewed millions of times.

Senator Xochitl Galvez, an opposition presidential hopeful, speaks to the press after registering her name as a candidate in Mexico City, July 4, 2023.

Mexican society is looking for someone new to believe in, Gálvez told The Associated Press.

"We'll have to see how much I manage to connect and how much I can convince," she recently told the AP.

Growing up poor in the central state of Hidalgo, her father was an Indigenous Otomi schoolteacher. He was also abusive, macho and alcoholic, Gálvez said. She learned to speak his native ñähñu as a child, holds her Indigenous roots close and favors wearing embroidered huipils.

As a girl, she sold gelatin and tamales to help her family. She worked as a scribe in a local civil registry office as a teen. At 16, she moved by herself to Mexico City and worked as a phone operator until earning a scholarship that allowed her to study computer science. Then she started a technology company, that, as López Obrador noted recently, has won government contracts.

Gálvez served as Indigenous affairs minister for President Vicente Fox, a plain-talking politician from the conservative National Action Party (PAN) who broke the Institutional Revolutionary Party's 70-year stranglehold on Mexican politics.

While she entered the Senate with the PAN, she has registered to compete for the nomination of the broad coalition of the country's traditional parties.

Galvez has assured PAN voters that she wants to keep advocating for them despite her moving to win over other parties with interests outside the traditional conservative base.

Her sense of humor and ability to speak comfortably, even at times profanely, with people in the street are characteristics she shares with López Obrador. They may be why he treats her as a threat.

The president accuses Gálvez of using her humble origins and speech to "trick" the poor, who make up much of his base of support. Instead, he paints her the candidate of the rich, the "oligarchs" and "conservatives."

She dismisses him as a fearful male chauvinist.

"He's going to try to deny my origins and deny my work, but there it is," she said.

"I had to face a very patriarchal culture, very macho, where as women we weren't seen as anything else but for work," she said.

Gálvez said she's not put off by the challenge posed by the favorites from the president's party.

"They're there because they want to continue doing the same as the president," she said. "They don't have their own identity."

Víctor Gordoa, president of Public Image Group, said Gálvez's life story is the kind that can reach people across social strata, resonating with the working class who see themselves in Gálvez, as well as the wealthy who see her as a potential weapon who has been untouchable so far.

 

Russia-Ukraine war: Drone hits Crimean ammunition depot as strikes kill, wound civilians and journalists in Ukraine

AP
By Felipe Dana
22 Jul, 2023 

Russian rockets are launched against Ukraine from Russia's Belgorod region, seen from Kharkiv, Ukraine. Photo / AP

A Ukrainian drone strike Saturday caused a massive explosion at an ammunition depot in Russia-annexed Crimea, forcing the evacuation of nearby homes in the latest attack since Moscow cancelled a landmark grain deal amid Kyiv’s grinding efforts to retake its occupied territories.

The attack on the depot in central Crimea sent huge plumes of black smoke skyward and came five days after Ukraine struck a key bridge that links Russia to the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014 and after Moscow suspended a wartime deal that allowed Ukraine to safely export its grain through the Black Sea.

Sergey Aksyonov, the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea, said in a Telegram post that there were no immediate reports of casualties from the strike, but that authorities were evacuating civilians within a 5km radius of the blast site.

The Ukrainian military took credit for the strike, saying it destroyed an oil depot and Russian military warehouses in Oktyabrske, in the Krasnohvardiiske region of Crimea, though without specifying which weapons it used.

A Crimean news channel posted videos Saturday showing plumes of smoke billowing above rooftops and fields near Oktyabrske, a small settlement next to an oil depot and a small military airport, as loud explosions rumbled in the background. In one video, a man can be heard saying the smoke and blast noises seemed to be coming from the direction of the airport.

The strike came during a week in which Ukraine attacked the Kerch Bridge and Russia, in what it described as “retribution” for the bridge attack, bombarded southern Ukrainian port cities, damaging critical infrastructure including grain and oil terminals.

A plume of smoke rises over an ammunition depot where explosions occurred at the facility in Kirovsky district in Crimea. Photo / AP

Ukraine also attacked the bridge in October, when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections, which took months to repair. Moscow decried that assault as an act of terrorism and retaliated by bombarding Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, targeting the country’s power grid over the winter

The Kerch Bridge is a conspicuous symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and an essential land link to the peninsula. The US$3.6 billion, 19km bridge is the longest in Europe and is crucial for Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.

As fierce fighting continues in Ukraine’s bid to retake territory from Russia, Russian shelling killed at least two civilians and wounded four others on Saturday, Ukrainian officials reported. A 52-year-old woman died in Kupiansk, a town in the northeastern Kharkiv region, while another person was killed in a cross-border Russian attack on a village in the neighbouring Sumy province.

Earlier Saturday, Ukrainian officials reported that Russian attacks on 11 regions across the country on Friday and overnight had killed at least eight civilians and wounded others.

A DW cameraman was injured on Saturday by shrapnel from Russian cluster munitions that also killed one Ukrainian soldier and wounded several others near the town of Druzhkivka, in the eastern Donetsk region, the German broadcaster said in a statement. Cameraman Ievgen Shylko was part of a team sent to report from the Ukrainian army training ground about 23km away from the frontline, it said.

“We were filming the Ukrainian army during target practice when suddenly we heard several explosions,” DW correspondent Mathias Bölinger said. “We lay down, more explosions followed, we saw people were wounded. Later, the Ukrainian army confirmed that we had been fired at with cluster munitions.”

Cluster munitions, which open in the air and release multiple small bomblets, are banned by more than 100 countries because of their threat to civilians, but they have been used extensively by both sides in the war.

The Pentagon has said the cluster munitions the US recently gave to Ukraine will give Kyiv critically needed ammunition to help bolster its counteroffensive.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced that a group of Russian journalists came under artillery fire in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. In an online statement, it said four correspondents for pro-Kremlin media had been struck by cluster munitions and that one of them, Rostislav Zhuravlev of the state RIA Novosti news agency, later died from his injuries.

The Kremlin-installed head of the Russia-occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevhen Balitsky, claimed in a Telegram post that the journalists were travelling in a civilian vehicle that was hit by shelling. The claims couldn’t be independently verified.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced the attack on journalists as a “heinous crime” in which the US and its allies were complicit.

The Ukrainian air force on Saturday morning said that overnight, it had brought down 14 Russian drones, including five Iranian-made ones, over the country’s southeast, where battles are raging. In a regular social media update, the air force said that all Iranian-made Shahed exploding drones launched by Russian troops during the night were brought down, pointing to Ukraine’s increasing success rate in neutralising them.

Hundreds of thousands march in Israel as former security chiefs beg Netanyahu to halt legal overhaul

Thousands of Israelis march to Jerusalem in protest of plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the judicial system, in Jerusalem, Saturday, July 22, 2023. Thousands of demonstrators entered the last leg of a four-day and nearly 70-kilometer (roughly 45-mile) trek from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Protest organizers planned to camp overnight outside Israel’s parliament on Saturday. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

PUBLISHED: July 22, 2023 
By JULIA FRANKEL

JERUSALEM — Tens of thousands of protesters marched into Jerusalem on Saturday evening and hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities in a last-ditch show of force aimed at blocking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious judicial overhaul.

Also Saturday, more than 100 of Israel’s former security chiefs signed a letter pleading with the Israeli premier to halt the legislation, and thousands of additional military reservists said they would no longer report for duty, in a protest against the plan.

In scorching heat that reached 33 C (91 F), the procession into Jerusalem turned the city’s main entrance into a sea of blue and white Israeli flags as marchers completed the last leg of a four-day, 70-kilometer (45-mile) trek from Tel Aviv to Israel’s parliament.

The marchers, who grew from hundreds to thousands as the march progressed, were welcomed in Jerusalem by throngs of cheering protesters before they set up camp in rows of small white tents outside the Knesset, or parliament, before Monday’s expected vote. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands flooded the streets of the coastal city of Tel Aviv, the country’s business and cultural capital, as well as in Beersheba, Haifa and Netanya.

4 of 16

Thousands of Israelis march along a highway towards Jerusalem in protest of plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the judicial system, near Abu Gosh, Israel, Saturday, July 22, 2023. The 70-kilometer (roughly 45-mile) march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is growing as Netanyahu vows to forge ahead on the controversial overhaul. Protest organizers planned to camp overnight outside Israel’s parliament on Saturday. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Netanyahu and his far-right allies claim the overhaul is needed to curb what they say are the excessive powers of unelected judges. But their critics say the plan will destroy the country’s system of checks and balances and put it on the path toward authoritarian rule.

U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Netanyahu to halt the plan and seek a broad consensus.

The proposed overhaul has drawn harsh criticism from business and medical leaders, and a fast-rising number of military reservists in key units have said they will stop reporting for duty if the plan passes, raising concern that the country’s security interests could be threatened. An additional 10,000 reservists announced they were suspending duty on Saturday night, according to “Brothers in Arms,” a protest group representing retired soldiers.

More than 100 top former security chiefs, including retired military commanders, police commissioners and heads of intelligence agencies, joined those calls on Saturday, signing a letter to Netanyahu blaming him for compromising Israel’s military and urging him to halt the legislation.

The signatories included Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, and Moshe Yaalon, a former army chief and defense minister. Both are political rivals of Netanyahu.

“The legislation is crushing those things shared by Israeli society, is tearing the people apart, disintegrating the IDF and inflicting fatal blows on Israel’s security,” the former officials wrote.

“The legislative process violates the social contract that has existed for 75 years between the Israeli government and thousands of reserve officers and soldiers from the land, air, sea and intelligence branches who have volunteered for many years for the reserves to defend the democratic state of Israel, and now announce with a broken heart that they are suspending their volunteer service,” the letter said.

Israel Katz, a senior Cabinet minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party, said the bill would pass one way or another on Monday.

“I represent citizens who are not ready to have their voice canceled because of threats of refusal to serve” or by those blocking the airport, highways and train stations, he told Channel 12 TV. “There is a clear attempt here to use military service to force the government to change policy.”

After seven straight months of the most sustained and intense demonstrations the country has ever seen, the grassroots protest movement has reached a fever pitch.

The parliament is expected to vote Monday on a measure that would limit the Supreme Court’s oversight powers by preventing judges from striking down government decisions on the basis that they are “unreasonable.”

Proponents say the current “reasonability” standard gives the judges excessive powers over decision making by elected officials. But critics say that removing the standard, which is invoked only in rare cases, would allow the government to pass arbitrary decisions, make improper appointments or firings and open the door to corruption.

Monday’s vote would mark the first major piece of legislation to be approved.

The overhaul also calls for other sweeping changes aimed at curbing the powers of the judiciary, from limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to challenge parliamentary decisions, to changing the way judges are selected.

Protesters, who make up a wide swath of Israeli society, see the overhaul as a power grab fueled by various personal and political grievances by Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, and his partners, who want to deepen Israel’s control of the occupied West Bank and perpetuate controversial draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.

In a speech Thursday, Netanyahu doubled down on the overhaul and dismissed as absurd the accusations that the plan would destroy Israel’s democratic foundations.

“This is an attempt to mislead you over something that has no basis in reality,” he said. Alarmed by the growing mass of reservists refusing to serve, the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, pushed for a delay in Monday’s vote, according to reports in Israeli media. It was unclear if others would join him.

Flooding on Canada's East Coast Causes 'Unimaginable' Damage; 4 People Missing

 July 22, 2023 
 Reuters

Buildings are seen in floodwater following a major rain event in Halifax, July 22, 2023. Intense thunderstorms dumped record amounts of rain across a wide swath of Nova Scotia.

OTTAWA — 

The heaviest rain to hit the Atlantic Canadian province of Nova Scotia in more than 50 years triggered floods causing "unimaginable" damage, and four people are missing, including two children, officials said Saturday.

The storm, which started Friday, dumped more than 25 cm (10 inches) on some parts of the province in just 24 hours — an amount that usually lands in three months. The resulting floods washed away roads, weakened bridges and swamped buildings.

An abandoned car in a mall parking lot sits in floodwaters following a major rain event in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, July 22, 2023.

"We have a scary, significant situation," said Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, adding that at least seven bridges would have to be replaced or rebuilt.

"The property damage to homes ... is pretty unimaginable," he told a news conference. Houston said the province would be seeking significant support from the federal government.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Toronto he was very concerned about the floods and promised that Ottawa "will be there" for the province.

The flooding was the latest weather-related calamity to pound Canada this year. Wildfires have already burned a record number of hectares, sending clouds of smoke into the United States. Earlier this month, heavy rains also caused floods in several northeastern U.S. states.

Authorities have declared a state of emergency in Halifax, the largest city in Nova Scotia, and four other regions.

The regional municipality in Halifax reported "significant damage to roads and infrastructure" and urged people to stay at home and not use their cars.

Pictures posted on social media from Halifax showed abandoned cars almost covered with flood waters and rescue workers using boats to save people.

Houston, citing police, said two children were missing after the car they were in was submerged. In another incident, a man and a youth were missing after their car drove into deep water.

A man wearing chest waders walks through floodwaters in a mall parking lot following a major rain event in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, July 22, 2023.

At one point, more than 80,000 people were without power.

Environment Canada is predicting torrential rain in the eastern part of the province, continuing into Sunday.

"People should not assume that everything is over. This is a very dynamic situation," Halifax Mayor Mike Savage told the press conference, saying the city had been hit by "biblical proportions of rain."

Canadian Broadcasting Corp meteorologist Ryan Snoddon said the Halifax rains were the heaviest since a hurricane hit the city in 1971.

Early on Saturday, authorities in northern Nova Scotia ordered residents to evacuate amid fears that a dam near the St. Croix River system could breach. They later canceled the evacuation order.

 

Virginia Woolf: Personal copy of debut novel resurfaces

PublishedShare

IMAGE SOURCE,UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

By Leisha Chi-Santorelli

BBC News Culture

Virginia Woolf's personal copy of her debut novel, The Voyage Out, has been fully digitised for the first time.

The book was rediscovered in 2021, having mistakenly been housed in the science section of the University of Sydney library for 25 years.

It is the only publicly available copy of its kind and contains rare inscriptions and edits.

Another UK first edition used personally by Woolf is owned by a private collector based in London.

Scholars say the find is "remarkable" and could provide insight into the English author's mental health and writing process.

Woolf is considered to be one of the most important modernist 20th Century authors, publishing more than 45 works including To The Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway.

She pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device and is a lasting literary influence to this day.

The University of Sydney hopes by publicly sharing their copy, the multiple notes showing the adopted and abandoned revisions will give a new generation of readers, literary students and scholars some insight into Woolf's thoughts.

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

Virginia Woolf suffered from anxiety, insomnia and repeated mental breakdowns during the writing of The Voyage Out

Woolf suffered from severe mental health breakdowns during the estimated seven year period it took to complete The Voyage Out.

She fell back into depression and was put in a nursing home the day before it was published in 1915, staying there for six months. Her husband Leonard Woolf said she was "writing every day with a kind of tortured intensity" to finish the novel.

She was institutionalised and attempted suicide several times throughout her life. She died in March 1941, aged 59, after filling her coat pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse.

Handwriting match

The University of Sydney said it appeared the rediscovered copy of The Voyage Out had been lost "through the bustle of everyday campus and library life".

Simon Cooper, Metadata Services Officer from the Fisher Library, found the book incorrectly shelved in 2021.

He said: "I knew the book didn't belong there, so I took it out and then saw the author's name handwritten on the first page.

"So, I looked up her handwriting to compare it, and it matched. It's her copy".

IMAGE SOURCE,UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Image caption,

The Voyage Out was incorrectly shelved and eventually found in the science section of Rare Books and Special Collections

The University acquired the book in the late 1970s through Bow Windows Bookshop in Lewes, East Sussex.

Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf had lived in the area - and members of the public can still visit their 16th-Century country retreat, Monk's House, which is owned by the National Trust.

'Unique object'

Original copies of her manuscripts, novels, essays and short stories now sell for huge sums.

One of the world's oldest antiquarian booksellers, Maggs Bros in London, told the BBC the rediscovered Woolf copy could be worth about £250,000 ($321,500) given the other first edition copy sold for just over £91,000 in 2001.

"Prices have increased for this material since then, in some places quite substantially," said Bonny Beaumont, Modern Firsts specialist at Maggs Bros.

IMAGE SOURCE,UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Image caption,

Sydney University Fisher Library staff member Simon Cooper found the book incorrectly shelved in the science section

In the rediscovered edition of The Voyage Out, handwritten edits made by Woolf can be seen in blue and brown pencil, with typed excerpts pasted onto the pages.

Some of the changes could have been made by an editor or someone else.

IMAGE SOURCE,UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Image caption,

An example of Virginia Woolf's edits

Academics say the rare text reflects Woolf's understanding of her own process of writing and how she developed the craft.

"It carries iconic value," said to Mark Byron - a professor of Modern Literature at the University of Sydney, who has studied the book in person.

"The revisions are fascinating in terms of what Woolf was thinking at the time," he added.

"Its role in Woolf's editorial decisions towards the first American edition of the novel in 1920 is an important element of its textual history."

"The inclusion of Woolf's annotations and corrections in her own hand, in pasted typed sheets, and in marginal editorial instructions, make this a unique object, shining a light on the composition processes of a pivotal novel in Woolf's career, and thus in the history of the novel in the 20th Century."

He added that the difficult composition of the novel led to the first significant adult breakdown for Woolf, suggesting the subject matter and narrative technique deployed in the novel may shed some light on matters of psychology and mental distress and its connection to Woolf's emergent career as a writer.

Some have speculated that Woolf was "potentially uncomfortable with how closely the reflections mirrored her own mental health when she was writing the book" which is what led to the changes, Mr Byron said.

The Voyage Out has been fully digitised and is currently the only one of two copies made publicly available

Most of Woolf's works are housed at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and the Berg collection at the New York Public Library.

Many have long believed that the other first edition of The Voyage Out owned by Woolf was held in an undisclosed private collection in the US. It is known as the "Adams" copy as it used to be part of a library belonging to a Mr FB Adams.

However, the BBC has learned that the Adams copy is in London and owned by a private British collector. He acquired it through the rare book dealer Peter Harrington at an auction held by Sotheby's in 2001.

Peter Harrington's son, Pom, who now runs the business, said he was excited by the rediscovery and digitalisation of The Voyage Out, and keen to examine the difference between the two copies.