MARITIME & MILITARY

                             URGENT DOT Bans All Samsung Galaxy Note7 Phones from Airplanes WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), today announced it is issuing an emergency order to ban all Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone devices from air transportation in the United States. Individuals who own or possess a Samsung Galaxy Note7 device may not transport the device on their person, in carry-on baggage, or in checked baggage on flights to, from, or within the United States. This prohibition includes all Samsung Galaxy Note7 devices. The phones also cannot be shipped as air cargo.  The ban will be effectiv...

China’s leading animal welfare organisation, Animals Asia, is hosting a premiere gala Saturday Dec 3 at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai. All proceeds from the event will go towards Animals Asia’s China Bear Rescue Centre in Chengdu and the organisation’s efforts to protect moon bears and end animal abuse.     The Blue MOON Gala will be an elegant affair to celebrate the lives of the rescued moon bears. You will feel enchanted by the gala’s theme - the forest, the natural home of the moon bear. The gala will be held in memory of Jasper the bear , who lived happily at the China Bear Rescue Centre for 15 years after a previous 15 years in a bile farm cage. Jasper, known fondly by his keepers as the “peacemaker,” became a global icon to end bear bile farming, and a beacon of hope for the thousands of bears still in cages across Asia. He passed away earlier this year at age 34. source:  http://shanghaiist.com/2016/10/29/animalsasia.php

The IDF battalion charged with safeguarding Israel’s border with Egypt has been stepping up its preparation for potential ISIS attacks from the Sinai Peninsula, where members of the terrorist organization have been operating, the Hebrew news site nrg reported on Sunday. According to the report, Caracal – the Israeli army’s first completely co-ed combat battalion – is being particularly vigilant, as it is the only force separating innocent civilians in southern Israel from the possible wrath of Islamic State-affiliated groups. In addition, its commander told nrg, the terrorists in question could decide at any minute to shift their attention away from operations against Egypt and turn their sights on the Jewish state. In an interview with nrg, Caracal commander Lt. Col. Elad Cohen said that he has been devoting the bulk of his men’s and women’s training for such an eventuality. Pointing to the difference between the work of soldiers in the West B...

      South Africa has decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court, according to media   reports on Friday. The move follows a dispute over the Hague-based organization's perceived focus on African countries. "The Republic of South Africa has found that its obligations with respect to the peaceful resolution of conflicts at times are incompatible with the interpretation given by the International Criminal Court," read the document signed by South Africa's minister of international relations and cooperation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. Opened in 2004, the International Criminal Court was the first tribunal granted permanent authority to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Of the ten investigations the ICC has opened, nine of them involve African leaders or governments.   Row over Sudanese president al-Bashir South Africa announced its intention to leave the legal body one year ago, af...

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Deitsch (Courtesy) Ukrainian police arrested four suspects, two of them minors, in connection to the brutal assault of Rabbi Mendel Deitsch in the Ukrainian town of Zhytomyr earlier this month. Deitsch, who serves as a Chabad Lubavitch emissary, remains in serious but stable condition at an Israeli hospital after a group of assailants robbed and beat him in the early hours of October 7. According to reports in Ukrainian media, two males and two females from the Carpathian mountain region attacked Deitsch outside Zhytomyr’s main train station. The assailants stole Deitsch’s cash and cellphone, leaving him bleeding and unconscious under a bridge, where he was only discovered by passersby the following morning. Ukrainian police identified the suspects last week, and made the arrests on Monday. Deitsch underwent emergency surgery at a Zhytomyr hospital for multiple head injuries and brain trauma. His family arranged for Deitsch to be airlift...

United Boeing 767-300 over Atlantic on Oct 13th 2016, cracked windshield   A United Boeing 767-300, registration N662UA performing flight UA-51 from Newark,NJ (USA) to Madrid,SP (Spain) with 221 people on board, was enroute at FL340 over the Atlantic Ocean about 260nm east of Boston,MA (USA) when the crew requested to descend to FL260 due to a cracked windshield. After turning around to return to Newark the crew requested to descend to FL100, during the descent the crew requested to stop at FL240, following collecting wind reports for several altitudes the crew requested to descend to FL140. The aircraft landed safely back on Newark's runway 04R about 100 minutes after leaving FL340. The flight was cancelled.The occurrence aircraft resumed service after 42 hours on the ground.     United Boeing 767-300 at Newark on Oct 17th 2016, rejected takeoff due to open cargo door indication   A United Boeing 767-300, registration N657UA performing flight UA-...

Third in an occasional series on Harvard’s wide-ranging programs, research, and involvement in Europe. BERLIN — One minute, Donia Mehu was standing in her kitchen, cooking and puttering. The next she was lying in rubble, horribly wounded and bleeding. It was 2012, the year that the Syrian civil war came to Aleppo, that troubled nation’s largest city and Mehu’s home. When her husband found her unconscious after the bombing, it was too late to save her leg. Mehu paused briefly in her story to control her emotions, then continued. Life was good in Aleppo, one of the world’s oldest cities, before the war. She and her husband had no children, yet they did well enough that she was able to stay home and take care of the household. But that world was now blown apart. She said that these days her wish was to learn German, to better navigate the country in which she lived as a refugee in a center outside Berlin. She wanted to move into an apartment and get new prosthetic leg....

 Ένα μικρό αλλά άκρως θλιβερό φωτογραφικό οδοιπορικό στην δεινοπαθούσα Συρία.

The water drunk by astronauts on the International Space Station is recycled by up to 80% from their sweat, urine and other sources. Recycling reduces the number of supply missions needed to run the Station, and building a self-sufficient spacecraft will be necessary for future mission farther from our planet. Flight surgeons and astronauts closely monitor the quality of the drinking water and the Aquapad experiment that ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will run in space aims to simplify the regular testing. Aquapad is a new approach developed by France’s CNES space agency: paper impregnated with powdered growth medium creates a 3D petri dish. When water is added, the microbes form coloured spots revealing their locations. Using a tablet app, Thomas will photograph the dots to calculate precisely how many bacteria are present and whether the water is safe to drink. Although developed for space, the technology behind Aquapad is clearly useful on Earth. For example, i...

 Australian thermal coal spot prices have hit $100 per tonne for the first time since 2012, with a cargo ordered at that price for delivery from Newcastle port in November, according to trading platform GLOBALcoal on Tuesday. The deal means that Pacific benchmark prices have now soared by almost 100 percent since June to levels last seen in April 2012, making coal the hottest commodity of the year. The price rally ended half a decade of steady declines, and has lifted mining share prices like Whitehaven Coal, Glencore or Anglo American away from lows. The price spike has been spurred by domestic mining cuts in China, which has required electricity generators and also steel makers to make up for the shortfall via imports, taking much of the market by surprise. “Coal miners are just as surprised as anyone in how well coal has performed. Limited supplies of high-quality thermal coal should keep the market in good shape through the end of the year. After that,...