According to state-owned Radio-Congo reported, “the rain with hailstorm blew out the roofs of over 150 houses and left several persons homeless including elderly persons, children and women who have been sleeping out in the open since 19 February”. The local authorities have reportedly sheltered some of the hailstorm-affected populations in the schools and administrative buildings ahead of the response of the Congolese government. A crisis committee led by an official from the ministry of Social Affairs and Humanitarian Action was set up to address the most urgent needs of the local communities hit by the torrential rain.
The Ministry of Health has cautioned the general public to be alert following a cholera outbreak in Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. According to reports, the outbreak has so far left one dead and six hospitalized at Katindo Refugee Camp. Dr. Thierry Nyatanyi, head of epidemic infectious diseases division at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, said that his ministry is ready to respond in case the disease is imported on the other side of the border. Goma, the border town of neighbouring DRC, is viewed as a possible transmission centre because of the booming business collaboration between traders there and those of Gisenyi Town in Rwanda. “We are prepared to combat the reported pandemic if it crosses to our side of the border,” Nyatanyi said. On Friday, the North Kivu Provincial Minister of Health, Mutete Mundenga, told local media that the outbreak occurred in the refugee camp. “There are some confirmed cases and the victims are being treated at the camp hospital,” he said. The Sunday Times has established that the affected people are family members of two night guards working at the refugee camp. They include their two wives and three children.
Biohazard name:
Cholera
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
The heavy rains that are currently pounding Singida Region have already caused costly damage. They have brought down a bridge that is a key link on the Mwanza Highway, rendering the road impassable. A Chinese national who made a bold attempt to cross the river after the bridge had gone down was swept away by flood waters to his death. Motor vehicles travelling northward to Mwanza and those heading for Dodoma, Morogoro and Dar es Salaam are stranded. The incessant rains, most of which came down on New Year’s Day, damaged Mnung’una Bridge at Msisi about 25 kilometres away from the municipality of Singida on Singida-Mwanza Highway. The collapsed bridge has also brought to a halt all heavy and light duty trucks taking provisions, imports and other needs to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, RwandaLeonard) Uganda. More than 300 motor vehicles remain stranded in the area.
Interviewed truck drivers, who are stranded in the area, say they have information that Tanroads engineers would come to work on the bride. They also allege that the quality of the broken bridge was substandard because old culverts had been used in its construction. The District Commissioner for Singida, Queen Mlozi, said that regional authorities had opened Singida-Ndago-Misigiri Road as an alternative route for the stranded drivers. Meanwhile, efforts to repair the collapsed bridge will be underway soon, the DC said. Singida Regional Tanroads Manager Yustaki Kangole said that temporary measures were being taken to enable the stranded motor vehicles to cross the river by laying stones and other construction material on top of the collapsed bridge. According to Eng Kangolle, the Singida -Iguguno Highway portion was constructed by a Chinese firm, CHICO and handed over to the government in 2008. In another development, the Mkalama District Commissioner, Mr Edward Ole Lenga, told reporters here that one unidentified Chinese national died when the car he was driving was swept away by the river at Gumanga Village.
One person has died while 37 have been admitted to a cholera centre in Mwense after the waterborne disease broke out in the rural district of Luapula Province. Enock Kunda, 17, died on Tuesday night at Mambilima Mission Hospital where 36 patients were admitted. Mwense District Commissioner (DC) Victor Kasuba confirmed the death of Kunda, who had come from Lundumuna village in Chief Mulundu’s area. Mr Kasuba said 35 patients had been moved from the mission hospital to Mulundu Basic School where a cholera centre was set up. Two other patients were admitted to Chibondo Health Centre. He said the first cases were reported on Sunday and the following day, samples were sent to Mansa General Hospital. Mr Kasuba said the results of the samples came out positive and appealed to residents in Mwense and other areas to avoid movements near the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border, particularly Kasenga area, where the disease was suspected to have spread from. He said there were confirmed cases of cholera in Kasenga district in the DRC. Mr Kasuba said the other place reported to have had cholera cases recently was Nchelenge district and as such, there was a likelihood that the waterborne disease could have spread to Mwense due to movement of people. “Confirmed cholera cases have been recorded. Initially, seven people were admitted to Mambilima Mission Hospital, but the number rose to 36 and one patient died on Tuesday night,” he said. Mr Kasuba said he had since directed the Immigration Department and Zambia Police Service to stop the movement of people from Kasenga District in the DRC into Zambia.
Biohazard name:
Cholera
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
Obama to visit New York to review storm recovery Washington (AFP) Nov 9, 2012 – President Barack Obama will travel to New York next week to view the damage caused by superstorm Sandy and meet victims of the disaster, the White House said Friday.White House press secretary Jay Carney said the visit next Thursday was to “view the recovery efforts, meet with affected families and local officials and thank the brave first responders who have worked tirelessly to protect communities following Hurricane Sandy.”"He’s coming next week, we’re honored to have him,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a news conference, denying reports that he had asked Obama not to visit during the height of the crisis, just before the presidential election.”That’s not true. I didn’t ask him not to come,” Bloomberg said.
Obama, re-elected Tuesday, interrupted his campaign for four days when the storm blasted ashore with hurricane force on October 29, triggering major floods and tidal surges in New York and New Jersey.
Although he did not go to New York, he did visit neighboring New Jersey on October 31, touring the wreckage with Republican Governor Chris Christie in what proved to be an unexpectedly welcome photo op for the Democratic president less than a week before polling day.
More than 110 people lost their lives in the storm, and 11 days later tens of thousands were still without power, while gasoline was being rationed in New York City and New Jersey due to shortages.
The group Doctors Without Borders has aided victims of war and disease in countries like Sudan, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Now, they are on their first mission in the United States — helping victims of Sandy, the megastorm that brought historic destruction to the New York metropolitan area.
By last Saturday, medical teams were on the ground in the Rockaways, a hard-hit section of Queens, as well as Staten Island, New Jersey and Brooklyn.
The doctors, nurses and medical students provide free medical evaluations to residents still without power, and help them fill and pick up prescriptions they might otherwise go without.
While noting the environment was “apples and oranges” compared to many of the locations Doctors Without Borders has worked, media relations manager Michael Goldfarb said there were gaps in health care after Sandy that the organization could address.
“There are real needs here and we’re doing our best to try to meet them,” he said. “There are vulnerable people here.”
In Far Rockaway, where a crew of four doctors, one registered nurse, four medical students and several other volunteers were working from a makeshift clinic in the first-floor laundry room of an apartment building, police direct traffic because street lights have gone dark.
There are National Guard trucks on the streets, and litter left behind where floodwaters receded.
Gas rationing in New York City began Friday, with drivers only able to fill up on even or odd days depending on the number at the end of their license plate — but that was of little use here.
At abandoned gas stations, cones and caution tape alerted motorists that they should move on.
Candice Humphrey, 28, lives in Brooklyn and never thought the first place she would work with Doctors Without Borders would be her own backyard.
A nurse practitioner who started training with the organization in September, Humphrey is awaiting her first placement overseas.
In Queens, she has provided home visit-type health care to residents in buildings such as one apartment complex that had no electricity and no running water above the fifth floor.
Some residents on upper floors “are essentially trapped,” she said, particularly the elderly, and those with knee or back problems that make it impossible for them to walk up and down stairs.
“We are seeing a lot of people who are running out of their medications,” Humphrey said. “People with diabetes, type 2, HIV, high cholesterol, other chronic health conditions that are not getting the medications that they normally would be taking because their supply chain has been broken.”
Louis Nelson, the handyman for the building where the clinic is set up, has been walking up and down the stairs to fix broken drainpipes and other building issues and figured he’d stop by to have his blood pressure checked.
When New York University medical student Steffen Haider took his blood pressure and discovered it was high, Nelson said he would make an appointment with his doctor.
Power is still out in apartments, and he said he had seen people lining up for the clinic.
“I’m glad that my tenants here take advantage of it because they went through so much stress due to the hurricane,” he said.
Shauvan Nichols stopped by with her 9-year-old niece, Soraya, hoping to pick up medications for her elderly mother, who has diabetes and lives on the 15th floor of Nichols’ building across the street.
The power is still out, and her mother can’t go up and down all those stairs.
“For people like them, it’s good, because they’re not walking around,” Nichols said. “I think it’s really good that the guys came over here just to help them.”
Nikole Russell, 64, lives in the building where the clinic is set up and has been helping direct friends and neighbors to the clinic. She praised volunteers she’d seen walk up 20 flights of stairs — more than once — to tend to patients on that floor.
“Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, we love you, we thank you, we appreciate what you have done for all the tenants,” Russell said. “And what you’re about to do, because you’ve got to come back tomorrow, too.”
A new virus that appears similar to rabies, but has the symptoms and lethality of Ebola, shown here, has been dubbed the Bas-Congo virus. It killed two teenagers in the Congo in 2009.
By Maggie Fox, NBC News
A virus that killed two teenagers in Congo in 2009 is a completely new type, related to rabies but causing the bleeding and rapid death that makes Ebola infection so terrifying, scientists reported on Thursday. They’re searching for the source of the virus, which may be transmitted by insects or bats.
The new virus is being named Bas-Congo virus, for the area where it was found. Researchers are finding more and more of these new viruses, in part because new tests make it possible, but also in the hope of better understanding them so they can prevent pandemics of deadly disease.
The virus infected a 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl in the same village in Congo in 2009. They didn’t stand a chance, says Joseph Fair of Metabiota, a company that investigates pathogens. Fair is in the Democratic Republic of Congo now, under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help battle an ongoing Ebola outbreak.
“They expired within three days,” Fair said in a telephone interview. “It was a very rapid killer.”
A few days later a male nurse who cared for the two teenagers developed the same symptoms and survived. Samples from the lucky nurse have been tested and it turned out a completely new virus had infected him, Fair and other researchers report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS pathogens.
The genetic sequences went to Dr. Charles Chiu, of the University of California, San Francisco.
“We were astounded that this patient had sequences in his blood from a completely unknown and unidentified virus,” Chiu said. They weren’t expecting that.
“Congo is very much known for having Ebola and Marburg outbreaks. Yet about 20 percent of the time we have hemorrhagic fever outbreaks that are completely negative, which means unknown causes and they are not Ebola.”
The sequencing puts this new virus on its own branch of the bad virus family tree — somewhat related to Ebola and the virus that causes Lassa fever, another horrific killer, and most closely related to the rhabdoviruses. This family usually only infects animals with one notable exception — rabies.
But rabies is not known to cause hemorrhaging. It’s plenty horrible on its own, of course, killing virtually all patients if they aren’t vaccinated soon after infection.
A nurse who took care of the first infected nurse had antibodies to the new virus. It doesn’t look like the teenagers infected one another, says Fair, but they probably infected the first nurse, who probably infected the second. Tests of other villagers have found no more evidence of the virus, however, which is good news.
“Although the source of the virus remains unclear, study findings suggest that Bas-Congo virus may be spread by human-to-human contact and is an emerging pathogen associated with acute hemorrhagic fever in Africa,” the researchers wrote.
Africa is loaded with nasty viruses. Lassa fever virus comes from a family known as arenaviruses and causes 500,000 cases of hemorrhagic fever a year. Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and Rift Valley Fever viruses are in another family called bunyaviruses; Ebola and Marburg viruses are filoviruses that kill anywhere between 30 percent and 90 percent of victims. They’re also helping wipe out great apes such as gorillas in Central Africa. This adds a new one to the list.
It worries Chiu because its closest relative is spread by biting flies in Australia. “We think that is potentially a valuable clue. This virus may have come from an insect vector,” Chiu says. “What is scary about this virus is if it does happen to be spread by insects, it has the potential to be something like West Nile.”
West Nile showed up in the United States for the first time in 1999, having never been seen here before. It causes regular outbreaks in Africa and parts of Europe, however, and some experts think a mosquito or an infected person carried it on a flight to New York. It’s killed 147 people in an especially bad U.S. outbreak this year, although more than 90 percent of people infected with West Nile never even know it.
New viruses often cause disease — there was severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS, which killed 800 people and infected 8,000 in 2003 before it was stopped. Scientists are now watching a similar virus that has emerged in the Middle east.
Chiu says there is not enough information to know how deadly the new Bas-Congo virus is.
“It has probably been lurking out there in remote areas and causing sporadic cases of hemorrhagic fever and no one had the resources to discover it,” Chiu said. “This is probably the tip of the iceberg. I believe there are many, many more of these emerging viruses that have yet to be discovered,” he added.
“This points to the importance of being vigilant, especially these remote areas of Africa and Asia. This is the area that I believe the next generation of emerging viruses will come from.”
Fair agrees, and says his team will be looking. They’ll also be checking to see if bats or insects can spread it. “It is a frightening prospect. That is why the next step in this process is to look for the vector,” Fair said.
That’s not so easy. Fair’s team and hundreds of other scientists have been looking for the reservoir — the animal or insect source –of Ebola. That would be a bat or other creature that can carry it without getting sick itself. So far they have had no luck, although fruit bats are a major suspect.
And for the new Bas-Congo virus, the trail is now three years old. “Everything we do will be as a forensic investigation,” Fair said. “We really have to go look for a needle in a sack of needles.”
And in the meantime, there’s an outbreak of Ebola to cope with. Fair says a coordinated effort is going on, although this isn’t the worst outbreak he has seen. It’s killing about 30 percent to 40 percent of patients — not nearly as bad as some strains, which killed up to 90 percent of victims.
“If you had to get Ebola, this is the strain to get,” he said.
A quake measuring magnitude 6.0 hit off the Solomon Islands today, but Australian seismologists said there was little risk of a tsunami.
The US Geological Survey put the quake at 6.0-magnitude some 272 kilometres west-northwest of the capital Honiara. With a depth of about 9 kilometres, it was about 112 kilometres southeast of the western city of Gizo.
Geoscience Australia measured the quake at about 6.2-magnitude but said it was unlikely to create a tsunami or cause serious damage in the capital.
“It’s just off the plate boundary so it’s a normal-sized earthquake and positioning for the area,” seismologist Hugh Glanville told AFP.
“It’s not too close to Honiara. There’s a local city with a population of about 6,000 or so that might get a bit of damage,” he said in reference to Gizo.
“But the majority of the population is a bit too far away to suffer more than a bit of shaking. And the population in the area is pretty sparse really.”
Glanville also said the quake was too small to generate a tsunami.
“Generally a local tsunami starts at about 6.5 (magnitude). It’s always possible, but it’s just extremely rare that it would generate a tsunami,” he said.
“It’s just one of the plate boundary earthquakes along the Ring of Fire that normally happens in this area.”
The Solomon Islands form part of the Ring of Fire, a zone of tectonic activity around the Pacific Ocean that is subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
In 2007 a tsunami following an 8.1-magnitude earthquake killed at least 52 people in the Solomons and left thousands homeless.
The San Andreas, Calaveras, and Hayward fault lines -which run underneath Silicon Valley – could set off tremors and aftershocks globally, according to a new study.
Researchers at UC Berkeley and the U.S. Geological Survey found that fault lines of the “strike-slip” type, where plates of land slide past each other, were more likely to set off the worldwide aftershocks.
As an example, the researchers found the 8.6 earthquake in Indonesia this April set off 16 earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.5 or greater within days.
Not only could these “strike slip” faults like the San Andreas, Calaveras, and Hayward faults set off worldwide aftershocks, but the researchers indicate the faults could also be set off if another earthquake’s tremors struck when the fault was ready to rupture.
However, the study indicates a quake powerful enough to do that only happens once every 50 years or so.
Scientists document an episode in the breakup of the Indo-Australian plate into two pieces, an epic process that began roughly 50 million years ago and isn’t done yet.
A woman and her baby evacuate to higher ground after a strong earthquake in Sumatra in April. (Heri Juanda / Associated Press / April 11, 2012)
By Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times
Planet Earth may be 4.5 billion years old, but that doesn’t mean it can’t serve up a shattering surprise now and again.
Such was the case on April 11 when two massive earthquakes erupted beneath the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, far from the usual danger zones. Now scientists say the seafloor ruptures are part of a long suspected, yet never before observed, event: the slow-motion splitting of a vast tectonic plate.
The first of the quakes, a magnitude 8.7, was 20 times more powerful than California’s long anticipated “big one” and tore a complex network of faults deep in the ocean floor. The violence also triggered unusually large aftershocks thousands of miles away, including four off North America’s western coast.
“It was jaw-dropping,” said Thorne Lay, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. “It was like nothing we’d ever seen.”
At first, Lay wondered whether the computer code he used to analyze earthquakes was wrong. Eventually, he and other scientists realized that they had documented the breakup of the Indo-Australian plate into two pieces, an epic process that began roughly 50 million years ago and will continue for tens of millions more. Lay and other scientists reported their findings online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Most great earthquakes occur along plate borders, where one plate dives beneath the adjoining plate and sinks deep into Earth’s mantle, a process called subduction. The April 11 quakes, however, occurred in the middle of the plate and involved a number of strike-slip faults, meaning the ground on one side of the fault moves horizontally past ground on the other side.
Scientists say the 8.7 main shock broke four faults. The quake lasted 2 minutes and 40 seconds — most last just seconds — and was followed by a second main shock, of magnitude 8.2, two hours later.
Unlike the magnitude 9.1 temblor that struck in the same region on Dec. 26, 2004, and created a deadly tsunami, the April 11 quakes did not cause similar destruction. That’s because horizontally moving strike-slip faults do not induce the massive, vertical displacement of water that thrust faults do on the borders of plates.
The type of interplate faults involved in the Sumatran quakes are the result of monumental forces, some of which drove the land mass of India into Asia millions of years ago and lifted the Himalayan Mountains. As the Indo-Australian plate continues to slide northwest, the western portion of the plate, where India is, has been grinding against and underneath Asia. But the eastern portion of the plate, which contains Australia, keeps on moving without the same obstruction. That difference creates squeezing pressure in the area where the quakes occurred.
The study authors say that over time, as more quakes occur and new ruptures appear, the cracks will eventually coalesce into a single fissure.
“This is part of the messy business of breaking up a plate,” said University of Utah seismologist Keith Koper, senior author of one of the studies. “Most likely it will take thousands of similar large quakes for that to happen.”
The quakes were also notable for triggering powerful aftershocks thousands of miles away. Though major quakes have been known to trigger aftershocks at great distance, they are usually less than 5.5 in magnitude. The April earthquakes triggered 11 aftershocks that measured 5.5 or greater in the six days that followed, including a magnitude 7. Remote shocks were felt 6,000 to 12,000 miles from the main quakes.
Fred Pollitz, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and lead author of one of the studies, said the quakes were extremely effective in transmitting seismic wave radiation around the world. Though Pollitz said the magnitude of the larger Sumatran quake is No. 10 on the list of quakes since 1900, no other temblor has triggered so many strong aftershocks so far away.
“It’s the most powerful earthquake ever in terms of capability of putting stress on other fault zones around the world,” he said.
Pollitz said the quakes were likely to teach seismologists about the physics of earthquakes, particularly those along strike-slip faults. That knowledge, he said, would certainly apply to California’s San Andreas fault, which is also a strike-slip fault.
Lay said that the Sumatran quakes were most surprising in that they were completely unanticipated by seismologists and that he did not expect the event to repeat any time soon.
This map of the Indian Ocean region shows boundaries of Earth’s tectonic plates in the area, and the epicenters (red stars) of two great earthquakes that happened April 11, 2012. A new study from the University of Utah and University of California, Santa Cruz, says the main shock measured 8.7 in magnitude, about 40 times larger than the previous estimate of 8.6. An 8.2-magnitude quake followed two hours later.The scientists explain how at least four faults ruptured during the 8.7 main shock, and how both great quakes are likely part of the breakup of the Indo-Australian Plate into separate subplates. The northeastward-moving plate is breaking up over scores of millions of years because the western part of the plate is bumping into Asia and slowing down, while the eastern part is sliding more easily beneath Sumatra and the Sunda plate. Credit: Keith Koper, University of Utah Seismograph Stations.
Seismologists have known for years that the Indo-Australian plate of Earth’s crust is slowly breaking apart, but they saw it in action last April when at least four faults broke in a magnitude-8.7 earthquake that may be the largest of its type ever recorded.
The great Indian Ocean quake of April 11, 2012 previously was reported as 8.6 magnitude, and the new estimate means the quake was 40 percent larger than had been believed, scientists from the University of Utah and University of California, Santa Cruz, report in the Sept. 27 issue of the journal Nature.
The quake was caused by at least four undersea fault ruptures southwest of Sumatra, Indonesia, within a 2-minute, 40-second period. It killed at least two people, and eight others died from heart attacks. The quake was felt from India to Australia, including throughout South Asia and Southeast Asia.
If the four ruptures were considered separate quakes, their magnitudes would have been 8.5, 7.9, 8.3 and 7.8 on the “moment magnitude” scale used to measure the largest quakes, the scientists report.
The 8.7 main shock broke three faults that were parallel but offset from each other – known as en echelon faults – and a fourth fault that was perpendicular to and crossed the first fault.
The new study concludes that the magnitude-8.7 quake and an 8.2 quake two hours later were part of the breakup of the Indian and Australian subplates along a yet-unclear boundary beneath the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra and southeast of India – a process that started roughly 50 million years ago and that will continue for millions more.
“We’ve never seen an earthquake like this,” says study co-author Keith Koper, an associate professor geophysics and director of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations.
“This is part of the messy business of breaking up a plate. … This is a geologic process. It will take millions of years to form a new plate boundary and, most likely, it will take thousands of similar large quakes for that to happen.”
All four faults that broke in the 8.7 quake and the fifth fault that ruptured in the 8.2 quake were strike-slip faults, meaning ground on one side of the fault moves horizontally past ground on the other side.
The great quake of last April 11 “is possibly the largest strike-slip earthquake ever seismically recorded,” although a similar size quake in Tibet in 1950 was of an unknown type, according to the new study, which was led by two University of California, Santa Cruz, seismologists: graduate student Han Yue and Thorne Lay, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences. The National Science Foundation funded the study.
The 8.7 jolt also “is probably the largest intraplate [within a single tectonic plate of Earth's crust] ever seismically recorded,” Lay, Yue and Koper add. Most of Earth’s earthquakes occur at existing plate boundaries.
The researchers cannot be certain the April great quake was the largest intraplate quake or the largest strike-slip quake because “we are comparing it against historic earthquakes long before we had modern seismometers,” says Koper.
Why the Great Quake Didn’t Unleash Major Tsunamis Koper says the 2012 quakes likely were triggered, at least in part, by changes in crustal stresses caused by the magnitude-9.1 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of Dec. 26, 2004 – a jolt that generated massive tsunamis that killed most of the 228,000 victims in the Indian Ocean region.
The fact the 8.7 and 8.2 quakes were generated by horizontal movements along seafloor strike-slip faults – not by vertical motion along thrust faults – explains why they didn’t generate major tsunamis. The 8.7 quake caused small tsunamis, the largest of which measured about 12 inches in height at Meulaboh, Indonesia, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Without major tsunamis, the great earthquake caused “very little damage and death, especially for this size of an earthquake, because it happened in the ocean and away from coastlines,” and on strike-slip faults, says Koper.
The researchers studied the quake using a variety of methods to analyze the seismic waves it generated. Because the same data can be interpreted in various ways, Koper says it is conceivable that more than four fault segments broke during the 8.7 quake – conceivably five or even six – although four fault ruptures is most likely.
Breaking Up is Hard to Do The Indo-Australian plate is breaking into two or perhaps three pieces (some believe a Capricorn subplate is separating from the west side of the Indian subplate). The magnitude-8.7 and 8.2 great quakes on April 11 occurred over a broad area where the India and Australian subplates are being sheared apart.
“What we’re seeing here is the Indo-Australian plate fragmenting into two separate plates,” says Lay.
The breakup of the northeast-moving Indo-Australian plate is happening because it is colliding with Asia in the northwest, which slows down the western part of the plate, while the eastern part of the plate continues moving more easily by diving or “subducting” under the island of Sumatra to the northeast. The subduction zone off Sumatra caused the catastrophic 2004 magnitude-9.1 quake and tsunami.
Seismic analysis shows the April 11 quakes “involve rupture of a very complex network of faults, for which we have no documented precedent in recorded seismic history,” the researchers write.
The analysis revealed this sequence for the faults ruptures that generated the 8.7 quake, and the estimated fault rupture lengths and slippage amounts:
+ The quake began with the 50-second rupture of a fault extending west-northwest to east-southeast, with an epicenter a few hundred miles southwest of Sumatra. The fault ruptured along a roughly 90-mile length, breaking “bilaterally” both west-northwestward and east-southeastward, and also at least 30 miles deep, “almost ripping through the whole plate,” Koper says. The seafloor on one side of the fault slipped about 100 feet past the seafloor on the fault’s other side.
+ The second fault, which slipped about 25 feet, began to rupture 40 seconds after the quake began. This rupture extended an estimated 60 miles to 120 miles north-northeast to south-southwest – perpendicular to the first fault and crossing it.
+ The third fault was parallel to the first fault and about 90 to the miles southwest of it. It started breaking 70 seconds after the quake began and ruptured along a length of about 90 miles. This fault slipped about 70 feet.
+ The fourth fault paralleled the first and third faults, but was to the northwest of both of them. It began to rupture 145 seconds after the quake began and continued to do so for 15 seconds until the quake ended after a total time of 2 minutes and 40 seconds. The fault rupture was roughly 30 miles to 60 miles long. The ground on one side of this fault slipped about 20 feet past ground on the other side.
A volcano has erupted on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, spewing thick grey smoke up to 1.5 kilometres into the sky.
Monitoring official Suparno says Mount Marapi’s eruption on Wednesday is its strongest since August last year, when its status was raised to level three out of four.
Suparno, who uses one name, says there is no plan for an evacuation because the nearest villages are far beyond the danger zone of three kilometres from the crater.
Marapi is among about 129 active volcanos in Indonesia, which is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
Its last major eruption in 1992 killed a climber and injured several others, including two American tourists.
A volcano on the border of China and North Korea is showing signs of increasing activity and could erupt in the next few decades, Chinese researchers say. A massive eruption of Changbaishan around 1,100 years ago spread ash and volcanic gases for 30 miles and left a 3-mile-wide crater atop the volcano, scientists said. Three smaller eruptions have occurred since then, the most recent in 1903, they said. Seismic activity, ground deformation and gas emissions recorded in a period of heightened activity from 2002 to 2006 suggests the magma chamber beneath the volcano is growing. This activity suggests an explosion could occur in the next couple of decades, researchers said. “We need to upgrade our current monitoring system in order to be able to meet the need for the early warning system for Changbaishan,” Jiandong Xu, a vulcanologist at the China Earthquake Administration in Beijing. Of the dozen or so volcanoes located in mainland China Changbaishan is the most likely to experience an eruption with potential catastrophic effects, Xu said.
A volcano has erupted on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, spewing thick grey smoke up to 1.5 kilometres into the sky. Monitoring official Suparno says Mount Marapi’s eruption on Wednesday is its strongest since August last year, when its status was raised to level three out of four. Suparno, who uses one name, says there is no plan for an evacuation because the nearest villages are far beyond the danger zone of three kilometres from the crater.
27.09.2012
Volcano Eruption
Mexico
States of Puebla and Mexico, [Popocatepetl Volcano]
At least 26 eruptions accompanied by steam and gas, as well as a volcano tectonic quake were registered as a consequence of the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl activity during the last hours, it was reported Tuesday. The National Center of Disaster Prevention (Cenapred) said eruptions were of low and medium intensity with no ash expulsion in any of them. According to the institution, the volcano tectonic quake was registered at 11.54 local time (16:54 GMT). At this moment, the alert light of volcano activity remains yellow phase 2 and the surrounding population to keep informed as to alerts on the activity of the volcano also known as Don Goyo. Traffic between Santiago Xalitzintla and San Pedro Nexapa, via the Cortes passage, is under control. The Popo is located at the center of the country, in the territorial limits of the Morelos, Puebla and Mexico states. Located 55 kilometers Southeast of the Federal District, the Popocatépetl is the second highest volcano in Mexico, with a maximum height of five thousand 458 meters above sea level, only second to the Pico de Orizaba (Veracruz) with five thousand 610 meters.
Taiwan on Thursday issued a warning over a strong typhoon approaching the island which could bring torrential rains and trigger landslides, a month after another heavy storm left six dead.
Residents in the north and east of the island were asked to take precautions against Typhoon Jelawat which is gaining momentum and approaching the island, the Central Weather Bureau said in a statement.
As of 0900 GMT, Jelawat was 380 kilometres (236 miles) southeast of the island’s southern-most tip.
With a radius of 250 kilometres and packing winds of up to 191 kilometres an hour, the typhoon was moving north-northwest at 14 kilometres per hour.
Typhoon Saola pounded Taiwan with fierce winds and torrential rain in August that left six people dead and forced nearly the entire island to shut down.
Britain’s most severe September storms for 30 years flooded homes and businesses in the historic city of York on Thursday and threatened chaos for much of northern England.
Residents took to boats to navigate the picturesque streets of the city dating from Roman times but officials said flood defences would cope as the River Ouse reached near record levels, three metres (10 feet) higher than normal.
City of York Council insisted the centre was “very much open for business” despite 80 properties being flooded while defences in the nearby village of Cawood were bolstered overnight by 4,000 sandbags.
“Loads of staff have been working through the night to protect the city,” said Sally Burns from the council, who said experts believed the river levels had peaked.
“We need to be careful and make sure we are giving (sandbags) to the people who are a priority, we can see on the monitors where the problems are.”
The Met Office issued more than 50 flood warnings — indicating flooding is expected — and 80 flood alerts – meaning flooding is possible — in England and Wales.
Further rain was forecast for Thursday, putting thousands of home in northern England at risk.
In Newburn, northeast England, a four-storey block of flats teetered on the brink of collapse after floodwaters destroyed its foundations.
Police arrested a man and a woman in connection with the looting of �20,000 ($32,300, 25,000 euros) worth of bicycles from a nearby shop.
Elsewhere, police were investigating the discovery of two bodies on the banks of the swollen River Clywedog in north Wales.
The body of a 27-year-old woman was found on Wednesday and the second body, believed to be male, was discovered on Thursday. Police believe they are linked.
An 11-year-old boy was fighting for his life after being struck by lightning in storms in Swindon, southwest England.
The storms have been caused by an unusually deep area of low pressure but conditions are expected to improve over the next 24 hours.
A family that fled to Tonga’s main island Tongatapu after the devastating tsunami hit the northern island of Nuiatoputapu three years ago had its house destroyed by a tornado on Wednesday. The house in the village of Makaunga was wrecked but no one was hurt. Radio Tonga says the family is now living in tents provided by the Red Cross. The town officer, Siosifa Lamipeti, says the tornado also damaged five power poles affecting supply for about 24 hours. He says there was minor damage to four other houses.
Bas-Congo virus after the province where it was found just west of Kinshasa, the teeming capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The discovery was announced today in the journal PLoS Pathogens. So far only three people in the remote village of Mangala are known to have contracted Bas-Congo hemorrhagic fever, two of whom died. One was a health care worker who cared for the other two villagers, which means it can apparently be transmitted from person to person, although no one knows how easily. But the small number of known cases is actually one of the important things about this finding. It signifies that scientists may have found an emerging disease very soon after it made its jump from whatever species it came from into humans. We’ll come back to its most likely origins a little later. The reason for thinking Bas-Congo only recently began infecting humans is that researchers have run blood tests on people throughout the DRC and found no evidence of antibodies that would indicate any of them has been exposed to the new virus. “It doesn’t appear to be widespread throughout the Congo,” study co-author Charles Chiu of the University of California San Francisco told Shots. He says the team is planning to do more blood tests on people in the DRC and neighboring countries, such as Congo-Brazzaville right next to Bas-Congo province. “I would say we caught it fairly quickly,” said another study author, Joseph Fair, in a telephone interview from the other side of the DRC, where he’s helping to track down the origin of an ongoing outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever that has so far afflicted 51 people and killed 20.
“This wasn’t HIV, where we’re 15 years into a pandemic before we actually find that we have a pandemic,” says Fair, who’s with a group called Metabiota that contracts with governments and health agencies to track disease outbreaks. The three known cases of Bas-Congo fever actually occurred three years ago. But tissue samples from the victims languished in a laboratory freezer in Kinshasa until an astute doctor called the cases to Fair’s attention. That time lag, along with the inability to keep some tissue samples from thawing out, has hampered the researchers’ ability to track the virus through other possible cases in Mangala village. There are some other striking things about the new virus. It doesn’t belong to any of the four families of previously known hemorrhagic viruses – Arenaviridae, Bunyaviridae, Filoviridae and Flaviviridae. These families harbor such notorious bugs as Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, dengue fever and Rift Valley Fever. Instead, Bas-Congo belongs to the Rhabdovirus family, which has never been known to include human hemorrhagic fever viruses, although it does contain one that affects fish. “That in itself is astonishing,” Chiu says, “but even within the rhabdovirus family, it’s very divergent.” That is, it doesn’t resemble any other rhabdovirus.
Biohazard name:
Bas-Congo hemorrhagic fever
Biohazard level:
4/4 Hazardous
Biohazard desc.:
Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release.
Global grain production is expected to reach a record high of 2.4 billion tons in 2012, an increase of 1 percent from 2011 levels, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project (www.worldwatch.org) for the Institute’s Vital Signs Online service.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the production of grain for animal feed is growing the fastest – a 2.1 percent increase from 2011. Grain for direct human consumption grew 1.1 percent from 2011, write report authors Danielle Nierenberg and Katie Spoden.
In 2011, the amount of grain used for food totaled 571 million tons, with India consuming 89 million tons, China 87 million tons, and the United States 28 million tons, according to the International Grains Council.
The world relies heavily on wheat, maize (corn), and rice for daily sustenance: of the 50,000 edible plants in the world, these three grains account for two-thirds of global food energy intake. Grains provide the majority of calories in diets worldwide, ranging from a 23 percent share in the United States to 60 percent in Asia and 62 percent in North Africa.
Maize production in the United States – the largest producer – was expected to reach a record 345 million tons in 2012; however, drought in the Great Plains has altered this estimate severely. Maize yields for the 2012-13 growing season are now expected to decrease 13 percent from 2011 production, for a total production of 274.3 million tons.
The reliance on grain crops for food security is threatened by more-extreme climatic events, especially droughts and floods. According to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction, the World Food Programme, and Oxfam International, some 375 million people will be affected by climate change-related disasters by 2015.
By 2050, the FAO notes, 10-20 percent more people will be subject to hunger based on the changing climate’s effects on agriculture, and 24 million more children are expected to be malnourished – 21 percent more than if there were no climate change.
“The relationship between food security, grain production, and climate change is especially important in 2012,” said Nierenberg, a Worldwatch senior researcher and Nourishing the Planet project director.
“The recent drought affecting the United States and the rest of the world show the need to reduce price volatility, move away from fossil fuel-based agriculture, and recognize the importance of women farmers to increase resilience to climate change.”
The drought taking place in the Midwest and Great Plains of the United States is considered the country’s worst in 50 years, coming close to matching the late-1930s Dust Bowl.
The drought is expected to cost many billions of dollars and could top the list as one of the most expensive weather-related disasters in U.S. history. The global market will be most affected by this drought, as so much of the developing world relies on U.S. corn and soybean production.
Food prices have already begun to increase due to lower yields, and price fluctuations will inevitably affect food security around the globe.
Further highlights from the report:
+ The FAO expects global maize production to increase 4.1 percent from 2011, reaching an estimated 916 million tons in 2012.
+ Global rice production achieved an all-time high of 480 million tons in 2011, a 2.6 percent increase from 2010.
+ World wheat production is projected to drop to 675.1 million tons in 2012, down 3.6 percent from 2011, with the largest declines in feed and biofuel utilization.
+ Since 1961, grain production has increased 269 percent and grain yield has increased 157 percent, while the grain harvest area has increased only 25 percent.
+ This is due largely to the Green Revolution and the introduction of high-yielding grain varieties.
High biodiversity acts as an insurance policy for nature and society alike as it increases the likelihood that at least some species will be sufficiently resilient to sustain important functions such as water purification and crop pollination in a changing environment.
“It’s the same principle as an investment portfolio – you’d be mad to put all your eggs in one basket,” says researcher Johan Eklof.
Experiments with eelgrass meadows in shallow inlets on the west coast of Sweden are now showing that climate change can exacerbate the negative effects of losing sensitive species, and that the insurance effect of biodiversity may be weaker than what we typically assume.
Eelgrass meadows in shallow inlets are important nursery habitats for cod, for example. Since the early 1980s the prevalence of eelgrass has fallen dramatically along the Bohuslan coast.
This is thought to be due partly to eutrophication, which favours mats of filamentous “nuisance” algae which shade and suffocate the eelgrass, and partly to the loss of cod, which has resulted in a huge increase in numbers of smaller predatory fish.
These predatory fish, in turn, reduce numbers of Grammarus locusta, herbivorous crustaceans which are effective grazers that normally control the filamentous algae.
This type of cascade effect has become increasingly common both onshore and off as many types of predator have been wiped out by hunting or fishing. Worryingly, theory and observations would indicate that these effects could magnify the effects of global warming, which favours heat-tolerant but grazing-sensitive plants such as filamentous algae.
At the Sven Loven Centre for Marine Sciences’ Kristineberg research station on Gullmarsfjorden, researchers from the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Biology and Environmental Sciences have developed miniature ecosystems in outdoor aquariums and have been investigating how future ocean warming and ocean acidification could affect the balance between eelgrass and filamentous algae.
The effects were unexpectedly clear and unambiguous: it was the diversity of algal herbivores that determined the extent to which the ecosystem was affected by warming and acidification.
“High diversity meant that neither warming nor acidification had any real effect as the algae were eaten before they managed to grow and shade the eelgrass,” says researcher and biologist Johan Eklof, who headed up the study.
“But when we simultaneously simulated the effects of fishing and removed the effective but vulnerable herbivor Grammarus locusta, the algae took over the ecosystem – especially in the warmer conditions.”
The researchers believe that we should be concerned about the results.
“Most management is based on the assumption that we afford to lose the most sensitive species because other, more resilient species will take their place,” says Johan Eklof. “But this may not be the case with future climate changes, as it can reduce the net efficiency of the resilient species – without directly affecting them.”
However, the researchers are also careful to point out that there is still hope if society does decide to take action.
“If we protect the local biodiversity we still have, and restore the diversity we’ve lost, by for example protecting predatory fish stocks in coastal areas and reducing nutrient loading, then we’ll probably be able to increase the ecosystems’ resilience to climate change.”
Nine people were taken to the hospital following a chemical spill at West Knox Co. Veteran’s Home. All of the victims were suffering from respiratory problems, one of them was being treated as an emergency. Authorities called it a concentrated chlorine spill. They said it happened shortly after 9:30 a.m. at Ben Atchley State Veterans’ Home in Karns. The home was evacuated and the scene is being treated as a hazmat situation.
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Unemployment hangs stubbornly at more than 8 percent, yet, defying election history, U.S. President Barack Obama would handily win a second term if voters went to the polls today.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney hasn’t capitalized on the stagnant economy because after sewing up the GOP nomination, he failed to move quickly on issues critical to key demographic groups and act on the challenger’s imperative to offer a better alternative to the president’s policies.
To win conservative primary voters, Romney rejected the Dream Act, which enjoyed bipartisan sponsorship in Congress and would permit young adults brought to America illegally as children to earn citizenship by completing two years of college or military service.
After securing the nomination, Romney failed to define a compromise position more acceptable to Hispanic voters and permitted Obama to pre-empt the issue by suspending deportation of those young adults. Obama enjoys an overwhelming lead among Hispanic voters.
Romney vows to repeal ObamaCare but is vague about what would replace it. The president’s healthcare reforms may be too expensive and encourage private firms to offshore jobs to escape costly coverage for employees; however, the law contains provisions popular among the elderly and with women — for example, much improved Medicare prescription drug coverage and coverage for children with chronic conditions.
No surprise! Obama leads Romney in Florida — a must-win state for any Republican candidate, along with Texas, given the Democrats’ lock on California and New York. And the president enjoys a significant lead among women in battleground states.
On the economy, Romney sounds like a broken record, repeating an annoying theme and undermining his appeal. Constantly harping Obama’s economic policies have failed, he asserts his business experience qualifies him to create millions of new American jobs.
Voters recognize Obama inherited a bigger mess than any president since FDR, managed to stabilize the economy and created more than 3.6 million jobs since the recovery began in October 2009.
At Bain Capital, Romney earned his fortune reorganizing troubled companies — often shutting facilities, outsourcing jobs and firing employees. Little in that history indicates he knows much about shaping public policies to encourage new industries, attract private investment, instigate innovation and generally help U.S. companies compete in global markets and bring jobs to America.
During the early days of his campaign, he talked a lot about the right things — dealing with unfair competition from China and developing domestic oil — but since, he has loaded up on Bush administration economic advisers and emphasized broader themes like deregulation and tax and spending cuts.
Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court on Tuesday froze a decree issued by President Mohamed Morsi reinstating the Islamist-led parliament, a judicial source said.
The decision is expected to raise tensions between Morsi, the top court and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) which handed over power to the new president at the end of June.
“The court ordered the freeze of the president’s decree,” the source said.
On Sunday, just eight days after taking office, Morsi, a former member of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, ordered the lower house to reconvene.
His move highlighted the power struggle between the president and the Supreme Constitutional Court which last month said certain articles in the law governing the parliament elections were invalid, annulling the lower house.
The judicial source added: “The court ordered that its previous ruling (invalidating the elections and annulling the lower house) be implemented.”
This edition of News Analysis reviews US President Obama’s move to issue a new executive order allowing the White House to control all private communications in case of emergencies.
Putin and the Future of Russia – Eric Draitser on GRTV
Eric Draitser of StopImperialism.com joins us to discuss the geopolitical significance of the reelection of Vladimir Putin as Russian President. We talk about the differences between Putin and Medvedev, the future of Russian-American relations under Putin, and the future of Syria.
New York Police Department (NYPD) has attacked and brutalized OWS protesters near Zuccotti Park
As the US presidential election draw near, the New York Police Department (NYPD) has attacked and brutalized OWS protesters near Zuccotti Park, not sparing journalists who were beaten and detained.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Giles Clarke, OWS Photographer from New York about the escalation in motivation by police to crackdown violently on unarmed peaceful protesters of the OWS movement and the systematic absence of coverage of OWS in US mainstream media as the US presidential election approaches.
Romania’s PM in Brussels to defend bid to oust president
http://www.euronews.com/ Romania’s Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, has held talks with EU leaders in Brussels to explain his bid to oust President Triane Basescu.
Senior European officials remain deeply concerned over the political turmoil unfolding in Bucharest.
Promising to address those concerns Ponta said:
“I’ve committed myself to give answers on this either on Friday or on Monday, to once again offer reassurances that this political battle will not undermine the rule of law, the constitution and the stability of Romania’s governing institutions in terms of European standards.”
The visit to Brussels by Ponta follows Tuesday’s ruling by Romania’s Constitutional Court to uphold Basescu’s suspension last week.
It means a referendum to impeach the centre-right president will go ahead at the end of the month.
Basescu is accused of acting against the government and parliament by blocking Ponta’s policies.
Further political rallies are set to take place in Romania in the coming weeks to bolster support for Basescu, who could hang on to his job if the turnout in the referendum is less than fifty percent.
Wells Fargo pays $175M to settle race discrimination probe
By msnbc.com staff and news services
The Justice Department says Wells Fargo & Co. will pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that it allegedly discriminated against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending from 2004 through 2009.
The settlement, which needs approval from a judge, would end the investigation into whether the fourth largest U.S. bank between 2004 and 2009 knowingly targeted minorities for risky mortgages that came with higher costs, according to documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“The Department of Justice today filed the second largest fair lending settlement in the department’s history to resolve allegations that Wells Fargo Bank, the largest residential home mortgage originator in the United States, engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending from 2004 through 2009,” said a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The settlement will provide $125 million in compensation for minority borrowers the DOJ said were steered into subprime mortgages, which usually carry higher fees. Wells Fargo will pay $50 million more in direct down payment assistance to borrowers in parts of the country where the DOJ identified large numbers of discrimination victims.
At a news conference, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the government will ensure that borrowers hit hard by the housing crisis will have an opportunity to access homeownership.
Cole said the bank’s discriminatory lending practices resulted in more than 34,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers in 36 states and the District of Columbia paying higher rates for loans solely because of the color of their skin.
Wells Fargo in May said it could face civil charges under laws that prohibit discrimination against minority homebuyers. At the time, the lender said in a securities filing it believed the charges should not be brought and said it was seeking to show the department that it is in compliance with fair lending laws.
The government investigation found that loans submitted to Wells Fargo by mortgage brokers had varied interest rates, fees, and costs based only on race and not correlated to the borrowers’ creditworthiness, according to the court document.
Wells Fargo noted in a statement that it has denied the claims.
“Wells Fargo is settling this matter solely for the purpose of avoiding contested litigation with the DOJ,” it said, “and to instead devote its resources to continuing to provide fair credit services and choices to eligible customers and important and meaningful assistance to borrowers in distressed U.S. real estate markets.”
JPMorgan investors wait to hear about the ‘London Whale’s’ splash
Eduardo Munoz / REUTERS
Commuters are reflected in stone as they walk past the JP Morgan headquarters in New York.
By Roland Jones
When JPMorgan reports its quarterly results Friday morning, most investors will be eager to hear just one key piece of information: How much of a splash did the London Whale make for the bank?
In mid-May, the bank announced it had sustained a multibillion-dollar loss that originated in its London office because of a failed hedging strategy undertaken by Bruno Iksil, nicknamed “The London Whale” because of the size of the trading positions he took.
“Investors want to understand what happened, who knew what and when,” Betsy Graseck, a managing director for Morgan Stanley, told CNBC Thursday.
Bank earnings don’t usually attract much attention outside the Wall Street community of analysts, traders and other financial industry observers. The JPMorgan report is likely to spur greater interest because of the massive trading loss, which has enraged public opinion and led to Dimon appearing on television and two Congressional panels to own up to his company’s mistakes.
Graseck said it will be important for Dimon, for investors and for the public to set the record straight on the trading loss. He needs to detail exactly how much of the disastrous trade has been “unwound” so the company can move ahead and avoid any future volatility in its stock price that may arise from uncertainly over deeper losses.
“The question is how much [of the trade] is left to go, and what is the volatility on what’s left,” Graseck said.
Investors and the public will want to hear details of how much money will be recovered from top executives at the bank involved in the botched trade.
When he appeared before lawmakers last month to explain his bank’s multi-billion dollar losses, Dimon said the trading debacle will lead to “clawbacks” — efforts to recover compensation paid to employees whose performance was later found to have harmed the company and shareholders.
Stocks closed Thursday’s choppy session lower, as diminished chances of monetary stimulus from major central banks prompted investors to shy away from risky assets.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 31 points, having lost over 100 points earlier in the day.
Market sentiment was weak, especially after the lack of any monetary easing by the Bank of Japan on Thursday, and few clues in the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s June policy meeting, released on Wednesday. The lack of policy moves suggested major central banks were still cautious about the need for further easing.
Technology shares have been among the worst performers recently, bogged down by profit warnings from companies such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Applied Materials Inc.
Investors in the U.S. appear to have shrugged off the news that the city of San Bernardino has voted to file for bankruptcy. This blue collar city fifty miles East of Los Angeles had already slashed salaries and cut twenty percent of its employees. San Bernardino still faced a 45 million dollar deficit when the city council called an emergency session and voted to file for bankruptcy. Al Jazeera’s Brian Rooney reports from San Bernadino.
Car makers’ dilemma: too many plants, too few buyers
http://www.euronews.com/ Peugeot’s 8,000 job cuts and closure of a plant near Paris comes as cash strapped Europeans buy fewer new cars and the region’s manufacturers ponder what to do about their surplus of factories with too much capacity.
In addition, unemployment is highest among young people – under 25-year-olds – which means a lost generation of drivers.
In France deliveries of cars and light vans fell by 0.9 percent in June after a 17 percent plunge in May.
In the first half of the year Peugeot Citroen was hit hard with a 13 percent slump in deliveries.
Fellow French carmaker Renault’s sales slipped by 3.3 percent, while Germany’s Volkswagen increased its market share in France and overall sales rose 10.2 percent.
Analyst Brenda Kelly with CMC Markets blamed austerity: “You’re seeing the effect (of austerity measures) on the private sector at the moment, and of course, as the demand for these goods (cars) goes down, so there will be an effect on the employment levels. So you would expect to see unemployment in France rise somewhat over the next quarter or so.”
Around Europe carmakers say they need help from governments to reduce their overcapacity.
It is estimated more than a third of the region’s factories are not using enough of their capacity to be profitable so the industry expects more layoffs and plant closures.
http://www.euronews.com/ Challenging Spain for the worst jobless total in Europe Greek unemployment has hit a record 22.5 percent of the workforce.
That was the figure for April, which was the latest available. Analysts said the country’s economy has worsened since then and unemployment will likely go higher.
Thirty-two year old Filia, an educated jewellery maker, has been out of a job for a year and has a 10-month-old daughter. ”It’s difficult. The parents help, I use my savings that I have put aside,” she said.
Michalis, 34, lost his job in Athens at a supermarket two years ago. He then went to France and found a job there, but was forced to return to Athens for family reasons and has not been able to find a job since his return a few months ago. ”There is always hope. But in Greece you see how things are, you cannot always save, save, save, that is why we want a united Europe, there has to be a social network, why don’t they go chase the people who spent all the money,” he said.
Bianca Tampouri, a translator, cannot find work, and her husband and 18-year-old daughter are also unemployed. “All my family we all have a problem, so yes I am concerned. About the future, our jobs, our lives, our psychology, you know dignity, everything,” she said.
But some Greeks are more optimistic; Nikos Govas, who was unemployed but opened a coffee shop, said: “If you want a job, you’ll find something. The problem here is everyone wants to work in a doctor’s office or as a civil servant. But it’s not like that. A rubbish collector or a CEO, they’re both jobs and bring in a wage.”
There could be some respite from jobs created by the summer tourism season, but even that is not guaranteed as visitors numbers and revenue were down earlier this year.
Strikes and violent anti-government protests have deterred tourists from visiting.
Tourism is a key sector which accounts for about one in five jobs in Greece.
By Christopher Torchia, The Associated Press July 11, 2012
ISTANBUL – The Syrian ambassador to Iraq has defected and is on his way to Turkey, the most senior diplomat to abandon President Bashar Assad during the 16-month-old uprising, a Syrian opposition figure said Wednesday.
Nawaf Fares, a former provincial governor, would be the second prominent Syrian to break with the regime in less than a week. Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, an Assad confidant and son of a former defence minister, fled Syria last week, buoying Western powers and anti-regime activists, who expressed hope that other high-ranking defections would follow.
Appointed to the Baghdad post four years ago, Fares was the first Syrian ambassador to Iraq in 26 years. Like Tlass, he is a member of the privileged Sunni elite in a regime dominated by Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
“It’s certain. Fares has defected. He declared his defection. … He’s moving toward Turkey,” said Khaled Khoja, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council who is based in Istanbul. Asked for details, Khoja said the information came from his own sources on the ground in Iraq.
There was no immediate confirmation from either Iraq or Syria. An operator who answered the phone at the Syrian Embassy in Baghdad said there was nobody at the embassy. When asked if the ambassador is currently in Iraq, the operator said he did not know.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. had no confirmation of the defection as of Wednesday afternoon. But he said recent high-level defections from the Assad regime were “a welcome development.”
“That is an indication of the fact that support for Assad is crumbling,” Carney said.
State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said that if true, Fares would be the first senior diplomat from the regime to defect.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh also said he could not confirm whether Fares had defected.
Thousands of soldiers, most of them low-level conscripts, have deserted and joined the rebels. But despite the latest high-profile defections, Assad’s regime has largely held together in the face of the uprising — particularly compared with the swift hemorrhaging of Moammar Gadhafi’s inner circle in Libya in 2011.
The conflict in Syria has defied every international attempt to bring peace. Although the Assad government’s crackdown has turned the Syrian president into an international pariah, he still has the support of strong allies such as Russia, Iran and China.
A prominent Syrian opposition leader said Wednesday during a visit to Moscow that Russia’s resistance to international intervention in the conflict was bringing misery and “suffering” to the violence-torn country.
Two Syrian opposition delegations visited Moscow this week, raising hopes that Russia could be pushed to accept the ouster of Assad. But Syrian National Council head Abdelbaset Sieda said he saw “no change” in Moscow’s stance after meeting with officials including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“The Syrian people are suffering because of Russia, because of the position it has taken, because of its veto in the U.N. Security Council,” Sieda said at a news conference. “The current regime uses Russian weapons against its own people.”
Activists estimate 17,000 people have been killed since the uprising began, and as the conflict continues, the rebellion appears to be getting more and more radicalized and violent, making any peaceful resolution or transfer of power a long-shot.
Confusion and fear has gripped Goma as rebels near the main eastern city.
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has expressed alarm as rebel forces advance towards the country’s main eastern city of Goma.
Witnesses told the BBC that rebels of the M23 group were 40km (25 miles) from the city, near the Rwandan border.
They said rebels appeared to be taking towns and villages with ease, with government troops usually melting away.
The Congolese government and the UN say Rwanda is backing the rebels, a claim Rwanda denies.
DR Congo has accused its neighbour of wanting to keep it unstable so it can exploit its rich mineral wealth.
The Congolese government has called on the international community to condemn Rwanda.
On Sunday, rebels were reported to have seized the strategic town of Rutshuru, 70km north of Goma.
A senior official at a national conservation park speaking on Monday just 40km north of Goma, told the BBC that “the rebels are very much in control of this area”.
Flexing muscles
Troublesome neighbors
April-June 1994: Genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda
June 1994: Paul Kagame’s Tutsi rebels take power in Rwanda, Hutu fighters flee into Zaire (DR Congo)
Rwanda’s army enters eastern Zaire to pursue Hutu fighters
1997: Laurent Kabila’s AFDL, backed by Rwanda, takes power in Kinshasa
1998: Rwanda accuses Kabila of not acting against Hutu rebels and tries to topple him, sparking five years of conflict
2003: War officially ends but Hutu and Tutsi militias continue to clash in eastern DR Congo
2008: Tutsi-led CNDP rebels march on North Kivu capital, Goma – 250,000 people flee
2009: Rwanda and DR Congo agree peace deal and CNDP integrated into Congolese army
2012: Mutiny led by former CNDP leader Bosco “Terminator” Ntaganda
BBC international development correspondent Mark Doyle says it is not clear if the rebels intend to attack the city.
If they do, there will be a new and massive humanitarian crisis, he says.
However, the rebels may only be flexing their muscles to strengthen their negotiating position with the government, our correspondent adds.
The rebels – who took up arms in April – named themselves the M23 after a failed peace agreement signed on 23 March three years ago.
They are supporters of renegade Gen Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Gen Ntaganda is an ethnic Tutsi – like the majority of Rwanda’s leadership – and a recent UN report accused Rwanda of backing the rebels.
Kikaya Bin Karubi, the Congolese Ambassador to the UK, told the BBC: “The United Nations Group of Experts last week published a report that says clearly that the so-called M23 are using Rwandan soldiers – and that’s the United Nations talking, not us.”
Rwanda has vehemently denied the accusations.
The M23 rebels defected from the army amid pressure on the government to arrest Gen Ntaganda.
An estimated 200,000 people have fled their homes since April, with about 20,000 crossing the border to Uganda and Rwanda.
Eastern DR Congo has been plagued by years of fighting.
In 1994, more than a million Rwandan ethnic Hutus crossed the border following the genocide in which some 800,000 people – mostly Tutsis – were slaughtered.
Rwanda has twice invaded its much-larger neighbour, saying it was trying to take action against Hutu rebels based in DR Congo. Uganda also sent troops into DR Congo during the 1997-2003 conflict.
US warns China of ‘conflict’ if it doesn’t agree to maritime code
Bosniaks hold another mass funeral on 17th anniversary of Srebrenica massacre, Bahraini activists rally in solidarity with Saudi protestors, suicide attack targeting police academy kills 25 in Yemen, and more.
Today’s headlines in full:
Bosniaks hold another mass funeral on 17th anniversary of Srebrenica massacre
BBC Arabic, UK
Bahraini activists rally in solidarity with Saudi protestors
Al-Alam, Iran
Yemeni tribal leaders meet to discuss US intervention in Yemen
Press TV, Iran
Suicide attack targeting police academy kills 25 in Yemen
Press TV, Iran
Saudis hold funeral for slain protestor
Press TV, Iran
Bicycle bomb attack targets Pakistan space researchers; one dead
Press TV, Iran
Syrian opposition and Russia fail to bridge gap in Moscow
New TV, Lebanon
Egyptians call for referendums on parliament dissolution, constitutional declaration
Dubai TV, UAE
Israeli state prosecutors debate proceeding with Olmert charges in real estate scandal
IBA, Israel
Israel: Migron outpost appeal hearing delayed for two weeks
IBA, Israel
Freed Palestinian soccer player Sarsak returns to Gaza
Al Jazeera, Qatar
Image: A Bosnian Muslim man sits and cries near the coffin of his relative at Memorial Center in Potocari before a mass burial, near Srebrenica July 11, 2012: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Mosaic is a Peabody Award-winning daily compilation of television news reports from the Middle East, including Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq and Iran. Watch more Mosaic at http://www.linktv.org/mosaic
The Vatican on Tuesday said it was excommunicating a Chinese bishop ordained last week by state-sanctioned Church authorities in northeast China without Pope Benedict XVI’s consent.
“The Reverend Joseph Yue Fusheng, ordained without pontifical mandate and hence illicitly, has automatically incurred the sanctions laid down by canon 1382 of the Code of Canon Law,” the Vatican said in a statement.
Under religious law, both the bishop ordained and the bishop celebrating the ceremony without papal consent are excommunicated, meaning that they can no longer receive the Eucharist or take an active part in the liturgy.
“Consequently the Holy See does not recognise him as bishop of the Apostolic Administration of Harbin, and he lacks the authority to govern the priests and the Catholic community in the Province of Heilongjiang,” it added.
With just 16 days before the Olympic Games kick off in London, there’s been a major hitch in the much-hyped security plans. Thousands of extra British soliders have had to be drafted in after a private firm failed to supply promised guards. The company’s been paid almost 300 million pounds – but hasn’t trained enough staff. RT’s Sara Firth has more.
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Paul Kagame with Michelle and Barack Obama (photo: Lawrence Jackson, White House)
A United Nations Group of Experts has uncovered information revealing Rwanda’s support for a Congolese rebel leader who is wanted internationally for using child soldiers. But the UN report, completed earlier this month, has not been released because of the section about the Rwandan involvement. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has been accused of applying pressure at the Security Council in order to protect the United States’ Rwandan ally, President Paul Kagame. Kagame was reelected president in 2010 with 93% of the vote.
At the center of the controversy is Bosco Ntaganda (aka “Terminator”), a former general fighting the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government. Wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2006 on charges of forcibly recruiting children as soldiers, Ntaganda and his forces have been aided by the Rwandan military, which has provided safe haven, as well military supplies, to the rebel army………………….
Frederick A. Murphy / CDC handout via EPA file
The San Andreas, Calaveras, and Hayward fault lines -which run underneath Silicon Valley – could set off tremors and aftershocks globally, according to a new study.
A woman and her baby evacuate to higher ground after a strong earthquake in Sumatra in April. (Heri Juanda / Associated Press / April 11, 2012)
Eduardo Munoz / REUTERS
