The president's opiod national emergency is not working and it has nothing to do with a wall.

Opioids are prescribed and not trafficked across the Mexican border. The heroine and fentanyl problem is about inbound drugs. But, "the wall" would not make a difference, it is known these two drugs are coming in through ports of entry in smaller quantities than marijuana.

China recently classified fentanyl as a controlled substance, that will probably help, but, it is not the entire solution.

The national emergency initiative is not working. It is time to shift the paradigm to end the prescription drug nightmare that are causing the deaths of so many Americans.

January 14, 2019
By Ashley Welch

For the first time on record, (click here) Americans are more likely to die of an accidental opioid overdose than in a motor vehicle crash, according to a new report from the National Safety Council.

The group calculates that the chance of dying from an opioid overdose has increased to 1 in 96, surpassing the odds of dying in a car accident, at 1 in 103. It's also greater than the odds of dying from a fall, a gun assault, pedestrian accident, or drowning.

"The opioid crisis remains an abstract issue for many people; they still believe it will not happen to them, or it isn't a risk facing them or their family," Maureen Vogel, spokeswoman for the National Safety Council, told CBS News. "These numbers show the gravity of the problem our country is facing. We need to reprioritize and regroup, because all these deaths are preventable."

Each day more than 130 Americans die after overdosing on opioids, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report finding the number of drug overdose deaths among middle-aged women skyrocketed between 1999 and 2017, with opioids, including fentanyl and heroin, being the main driver. Deaths from prescription and illicit opioids in children and teens also tripled over the same time period, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open.

Data reported last year showed drug overdoses killed more Americans in 2016 than the Vietnam War, with three-quarters of those deaths caused by opioids....

The group calculates that the chance of dying from an opioid overdose has increased to 1 in 96, surpassing the odds of dying in a car accident, at 1 in 103. It's also greater than the odds of dying from a fall, a gun assault, pedestrian accident, or drowning

"The opioid crisis remains an abstract issue for many people; they still believe it will not happen to them, or it isn't a risk facing them or their family," Maureen Vogel, spokeswoman for the National Safety Council, told CBS News. "These numbers show the gravity of the problem our country is facing. We need to reprioritize and regroup, because all these deaths are preventable."Data reported last year showed drug overdoses killed more Americans in 2016 than the Vietnam War, with th

Poland is having it's ups and downs, but, it will never allow a Russian influence in the country.

January 14, 2019
By Michael Birnbaum

Brussels — A prominent Polish opposition leader, (click here) Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz, died Monday after being stabbed in the chest a day earlier at a charity concert, unsettling Polish politics at a tense and polarized moment in the nation’s history.

The attack, which was broadly condemned across the political spectrum, stunned a country that has become deeply divided over attempts by the ruling Law and Justice party to increase its control over courts, media and other aspects of public life.

Polish authorities allege that the assailant was a 27-year-old man with a history of crime and mental illness. After he stabbed Adamowicz repeatedly on a stage in front of a crowd of thousands, he declared himself to have been wrongfully imprisoned by Poland’s previous ruling party, which had supported Adamo­wicz....

Following the funeral (click here) Minister Krzysztof Szczerski read a letter from the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda.

The Letter (click here) 

Poland has, (click here) for the last three years, been the subject of strong criticism from EU leaders. The main bone of contention has the been the Polish government’s repeated attempts to make sweeping changes to the independent judiciary, widely seen as a slide towards authoritarianism in the former communist country. Such moves have prompted punitive actions by the EU, including the launch of Article 7 proceedings against the Polish government in December last year. The latest installment in the saga has been an attempt to force Supreme Court justices to retire earlier at 65 as opposed to the current limit of 70. But after an intervention by the European Court of Justice, politicians have this week voted to reverse this decision. Euronews spoke to Wojciech Sadurski, a law professor and Polish legal expert, about the situation in Poland....

President Duda is very loyal to democracy. He has a long history of leadership in Poland and he has made rather interesting strides for the country. Today, unfortunately there was an assassination of a political figure and there is talk about how Poland might be disintegrating into many factions. I don't see that happening.

President Duda has entered into an agreement with a wall of countries in Central Europe. It is an economic wall as well as a strategic wall.

The Three Seas Initiative (click here) is a flexible political platform, at Presidential level, launched in 2015. The Initiative includes the 12 EU Member States located between the Adriatic, the Baltic and the Black Seas: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia....

The Three Seas Initiative a a brave new way of insuring these 12 countries are always economically strong and strategically prepared for nonsense from Russia. they are all members of NATO and span three sees, the Black Sea, the Adriatic and the Baltic. That is an amazing alliance within NATO.

The Presidents have a flexible platform because it allows for cultural initiative and cross border economic strategies. There may be turbulence in Poland because of mischief by Putin, but, to believe there is ever going to be any relinquishment of democracy is pure speculation. 

The Polish people embrace their freedom. They sometimes are lead to an undemocratic approach because they trust a little too much, but, President Duda is an incredible president with a very long history of dedication to the people of Poland and the freedom they love. There is too much about Duda, Poland and the Three Sea Imitative that stands for freedom and strength. Perhaps Poland and it's alliance would like to have a climate efficient aluminum smelter within their borders.

"Good Night, Moon"

First quarter moon

7.1 day old moon

47.3 percent lit

January 12, 2019
By Tom Palmer

The moon (click here) will turn red next Sunday night as the earth’s shadow moves between the moon and the sun.

As most of you know, this is called a total lunar eclipse.

Members of the Imperial Polk Astronomical Society will present a program beginning at 7 p.m. at Florida Southern College’s Annie Pfeiffer Chapel in Lakeland. The event is free and open to the public.

Local astronomers will discuss the eclipse and answer questions.

They will set up telescopes on the college grounds to view the eclipse, which will start at 9:36 p.m. The viewing will occur during the entire eclipse, which will end at 2:48 a.m. Monday.

If the sky is clear, the eclipse should be visible everywhere in Polk County.

Total lunar eclipses happen so often in a normal person’s life that many people will probably stay indoors for the event.

This was not always so....

Stop this, now.

May 3, 2013

The last time (click here) there was this much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere, modern humans didn't exist. Megatoothed sharks prowled the oceans, the world's seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer than it is now.

As we near the record for the highest CO2 concentration in human history — 400 parts per million — climate scientists worry about where we were then, and where we're rapidly headed now.

According to data gathered at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the 400 ppm mark may briefly be exceeded this month, when CO2 typically hits a seasonal peak in the Northern Hemisphere, although it is more likely to take a couple more years until it stays above that threshold, according to Ralph Keeling, a researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Keeling is the son of Charles David Keeling, who began the CO2 observations at Mauna Loa in 1958 and for whom the iconic “Keeling Curve” is named.

Carbon dioxide is the most important long-lived global warming gas, and once it is emitted by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil, a single CO2 molecule can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Global CO2 emissions reached a record high of 35.6 billion tonnes in 2012, up 2.6 percent from 2011. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases warm the planet by absorbing the sun’s energy and preventing heat from escaping back into space....

The world cannot afford war. The Climate Crisis is too important to allow Russian war ambitions any real brevity.

Too many cooks spoil the soup. Eliminate all the unofficial delegates. The delegates that do attend need to be recognized by their government with a comprehensive plan for their country. The entire focus needs to be prioritized to 

...At Paris, (click here) there was a provisional list of around 15,000 participants present on behalf of a particular country, or “party” – plus another 8,000 unofficial delegates – while at last year’s COP in Bonn, there were around 11,300 participants....

A majority of delegates need to be scientists from each country involved with climate. There has to be progress in the areas of eliminating greenhouse gases and scientists can assist with that. There should be NO delegates that represent the petroleum industry.

Earth cannot wait one more day. As of January 1, 2019, there are eleven more years to avoid a catastrophe by 2030. This is not a new assessment by the IPCC. They have been stating 2030 as the year when all measures to end the climate crisis should be in place. There is no disagreement about this from the entire world of science. It is time to move forward and solidify all plans.

The USA Democrats need to assemble their delegation including the scientists that wrote the report for the country. One of those delegates needs to be Governor Jerry Brown who knows first hand the bureaucracy that can hinder such accomplishments.

16 December 2018

Nearly 23,000 delegates (click here) descended on the coal-tinged city with a deadline for hashing out the Paris Agreement “rulebook”, which is the operating manual needed for when the global deal enters into force in 2020.

This was mostly agreed, starting a new international climate regime under which all countries will have to report their emissions – and progress in cutting them – every two years from 2024.

But as countries wrestled with the “four-dimensional spaghetti” of competing priorities – as one delegate put it to Carbon Brief – they clashed over how to recognise the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on 1.5C and whether to clearly signal the need for greater ambition to stay below this temperature limit.

The final outcome included hints at the need for more ambitious climate pledges before 2020, leaving many NGOs disappointed at the lack of more forceful language. Meanwhile, new research released at the COP showed global emissions were going up, not down.

With tension mounting across the fortnight of the talks, UN secretary-general António Guterres had to visit the COP several times to force progress. Despite settling on large parts of the Paris rulebook, countries failed to agree the rules for voluntary market mechanisms, pushing part of the process onto next year’s COP25 in Chile.

Here, Carbon Brief provides in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes in Katowice – both inside and outside the COP…

Ukraine is hesitant in many ways to allow outside interests to bring about change in Ukrainian ownership. I think any interested party can understand that. It is called "Adverse Russian Influence."

Ukraine is a large country in Eastern Europe known for its Orthodox churches, Black Sea coastline and forested mountains. Its capital, Kiev, features the gold-domed St. Sophia's Cathedral, with 11th-century mosaics and frescoes. Overlooking the Dnieper River is the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, a Christian pilgrimage site housing Scythian tomb relics and catacombs containing mummified Orthodox monks.

Ukraine is part of Eastern Europe. It shares borders with the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, and with Belarus towards the northwest border. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland are to its west; Romania and Moldova share its southwest border; and the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea are to its south and southeast borders.

The entire country constitutes a total land area of 603,628 Km2. This makes Ukraine by far the biggest country in the whole of Europe. The population density is currently at approximately 73 people per square kilometer.

Ukraine is a unitary state comprised of 24 provinces. It also has the Crimean Peninsula and 2 cities with very special status. These cities are Kiev and the capital of the country, Sevastopol.

Sevastopol is located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula. It is the largest port in Ukraine. (The first was Port of Odesa.) The city houses the vast population of 342,451 people, which was calculated in the 2001 consensus. The city lies on an area of 864 Km2 which is about 0.14% of the whole country.

The people in Ukraine are known to be from several religious affiliations. These include the most common ones - the Kiev Patriarchy Orthodox Church, the Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Protestant churches, the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, and Jewish - and some other minority religions as well.

The total population in Ukraine is estimated to be 44.01 million in 2018, down from 45.55 million in 2013. This figure makes it the 31st most-populated country in the world. The population growth rate, as of 2012, is estimated to be -3.1%. The negative growth rate indicates a decline in the population.

October 4, 2018

January 2, 2018 (click here)
Snow covers agricultural land near Ternopil, Ukraine.
Mriya Agro Holding Plc, the company hauling away the last of the sugar beet crop, owns none of the wide-open field. Under the snow, it’s a patchwork of 270 individual plots that the company leases for three to five years each. The peasants, who were bequeathed the land after the fall of communism, aren’t allowed to sell, and the company isn’t allowed to buy, so it has little incentive to spend any money to increase the harvest.

...According to the World Bank’s Special Focus Note (click here) on international trade, Ukraine has tremendous potential to boost exports of higher-value added products, but this potential has not yet been realized.

Ukraine’s exports remain concentrated in metals and cereals, while the share of exports integrated with Global Value Chains (GVC) remains low at 5.7 percent in Ukraine, compared to 27 percent for Poland, 38 percent for Romania, 38 percent for Turkey, and 59 percent for Vietnam.

Boosting higher-value added and GVC exports is a major opportunity for Ukraine to leverage its special access to the EU market. Ukraine has demonstrated potential on this front through the exports of automotive ignition wiring sets which grew from $21 million in 2000 to $1.217 billion in 2017, one of the fastest growing export product categories in recent years.

Reforms to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) are an important driver of exports and integration into GVCs. Specifically, this will require reforms to strengthen anticorruption measures and the rule of law, make progress on privatization, safeguard macroeconomic stability, and clean up the high share of non-performing loans.

Ukraine also needs to create an efficient and competitive logistics system to boost exports and accelerate its integration into the global economy. Specifically, this will require improving regulatory clarity and the management of public assets, increasing utilization of river transport, reforming the railway system, and addressing inefficiencies in the storage system.

January 11, 2019
By Sam Shead

Research engineer Jack Kelly (click here) announced this week that he has leftGoogle DeepMind to set up a non-profit product development lab that will aim to come up with climate change combating technologies.

DeepMind is widely regarded as being at the forefront of AI research, along with Facebook's FAIR group, and a couple of other players. The London-headquartered firm, which employs an army of more than 700 people in offices around the world, boasts a very low staff turnover rate. Back in early 2016, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told The Guardian that no one had ever left DeepMind. However, Kelly is one of two Google DeepMinders that announced new ventures this week. Elsewhere, DeepMind research scientist Edward Grefenstette said that he has joined the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) group after four years at DeepMind.

"I'm terrified by climate change, and I'm increasingly convinced that climate change mitigation is a 'go big or go home' thing," Kelly wrote in a blog post published on Monday.

Kelly added: "The non-profit will combine ideas from open-science and startup culture, and will focus on interventions which are practical and scalable."...

Current Climate Action Assessment of Ukraine (click here)

Ukraine (click here) is among the highest greenhouse gas emitters, in the world. Ukraine’s high CO2 emissions are related to its exorbitant energy intensity, which is more than three times higher than the European Union average. USAID works with Ukraine to strengthen the legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks that support clean energy alternatives. At the local level USAID helps reduce wasteful energy consumption in municipalities by addressing low end-use energy efficiency and insufficient utilization of renewable and alternative energy sources. In addition, USAID helps develop access to financing for sustainable clean energy solutions through public-private partnerships and private investment support programs....

July 1, 2018

USAID leads efforts to decrease energy dependence and CO2 emissions (click here) in Ukraine by reducing waste and inefficiency in central heating systems. 

USAID energy programs improve Ukraine’s energy efficiency and reduce the country’s critical dependence on energy imports. USAID works with Ukrainian leaders to reform Ukraine’s extremely energy-intensive municipal heating sector by strengthening the legal, regulatory, and institutional frameworks necessary to improve heating services. USAID also assists Ukraine’s efforts to create a social safety net to keep heat affordable to vulnerable populations....

July 11, 2014

USAID/OFDA provides lifesaving humanitarian assistance (click here) to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and conflict affected vulnerable populations throughout eastern Ukraine and Kyiv Oblast.

USAID/OTI's goal is to enable vulnerable Eastern communities to actively participate in, benefit from and advocate for Ukraine’s transition to a prosperous, unified and democratic state. It does this by working in the East to:

Increase support for and participation in the development of an inclusive Ukrainian identity; and

Increase citizen confidence and engagement in the reform process at the local level....

Cities and countries are disappearing off the map.

January 10, 2019

By Alissa Walker

California’s deadliest, (click here) most destructive fire in history leveled a city of 26,000 residents within a matter of hours. “Completely destroyed,” read the headlines. “Obliterated.” “Paradise lost.”

After a year punctuated by increasingly alarming climate reports, as well as some of the most devastating disasters for many U.S. cities, it’s been difficult to grasp the severity of what seems to be happening—and the fact that it seems to be happening faster and more frequently than we expected.

In November 2018, the Camp Fire burned 95 percent of the structures in the city of Paradise, killing 86 people.

But it was only a few weeks before the Camp Fire that a similar set of phrases were used to describe Mexico Beach, Florida, after one of the strongest hurricanes in U.S. history made landfall, killing 45 people: “It’s all gone,” “nothing left.”

No human lives were at risk, but seeing an 11-acre Hawaiian island vanish after a rare, powerful storm swept over the state elicited the same type of responses: “No one expected East Island to disappear this quickly.”

It’s clear now what the accelerated timeline of climate change really means is a swift, steady decline in the number of places where we will be able to make our homes, visit for pleasure, and, eventually, survive....

California Drought Map November 6, 2018 (click here)

...On November 8, 2018, (click here) a wildland fire identified as the Camp Fire was reported at Pulga Road at Camp Creek Road near Jarbo Gap in Butte County, according to the website of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (“CAL FIRE”). CAL FIRE is the lead investigative agency and has identified the start time of the fire as 6:33 a.m. On CAL FIRE’s website, CAL FIRE has identified coordinates for the Camp Fire near Tower :27/222 on PG&E’s Caribou-Palermo 115 kV Transmission Line. CAL FIRE’s website also reports that approximately 153,336 acres have been burned, 18,793 structures have been destroyed, and that there were 85 civilian fatalities and 3 firefighter injuries. The Camp Fire has been fully contained.

Approximately? These are computerized systems. Why approximately?

Camp Fire Map (click here)

On November 8, 2018, at approximately 6:15 a.m., the PG&E Caribou-Palermo 115kV Transmission Line relayed and deenergized. One customer was impacted by the transmission outage. At approximately 6:30 a.m. a PG&E employee observed fire in the vicinity of Tower :27/222, and this observation was reported to 911 by PG&E employees. In the afternoon of November 8, PG&E observed damage on the line at Tower :27/222, located near Camp Creek and Pulga Roads, near the Town of Pulga. Specifically, an aerial patrol identified that on

Tower :27/222, a suspension insulator supporting a transposition jumper had separated from an arm on the tower. The suspension insulator and the transposition jumper remained suspended above the ground...

25 October 2018 (click here)

A piece of the United States has been dramatically wiped off the map after an island in Hawaii was washed away by a powerful hurricane.

East Island, a remote spit of gravel and sand that sat atop a coral reef, has vanished after having this misfortune to come into contact with Hurricane Walaka, an intense storm that surged past Hawaii earlier this month.

Footage captured by Chip Fletcher shows what the island looked like before it was annihilated while satellite imagery from the US Fish and Wildlife Services shows how little was left after the hurricane

Ukraine drought.

18 June 2018

About one-quarter (click here) of Ukraine's territory suffers from drought, with mostly eastern and southern regions under threat of losing a considerable part of the gross grain harvest. Tetyana Adamenko, the head of Ukraine's Hydrometeorological Centre said this as quoted by Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

'The drought engulfed the southeastern part of Ukraine - mostly Zaporizhya, Kherson and Kharkiv region (the latter is northeastern Ukraine, - 112 International). The rains in these areas were quite irregular; one can say that a strong drought is observed on 25 percent of the country's territory', she said.

According to Adamenko, the forecast on the changes in the gross grain harvest will appear by late June.

Previously, the All-Ukraine Agrarian Council stated that the long-lasting lack of precipitations may result in the loss of up to half of the gross grain harvest in southern, central and eastern regions.

The extreme level of fire danger is currently observed in eastern and southern regions. However, according to the weather forecasters, thunderstorms will take place in various regions across the country; the average temperatures will keep at the rate of 28-34 degrees above Celsius....

Society must address a "zero greenhouse gas emission policy" now.

I find this approach to the warming of Earth interesting, but, the IPCC still is my "go to" persons to establish the warming trend of Earth. Their study is not just based on ocean temperatures, but, use "on the ground" information from scientists all over the world to determine it's outcomes.

January 11, 2019
By Eric Levitz

One year ago, (click here) the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) declared it “extremely unlikely” that humanity would overcome its dependence on fossil fuels in time to keep global temperatures from exceeding the threshold set by the Paris Agreement.

Since then, scientists have discovered that Antarctica is melting faster than they’d realized; that global carbon emissions are rising faster than expected; and, now, that the world’s oceans are heating up more rapidly than the IPCC had assumed.

Specifically, the ocean is warming 40 percent faster than the United Nations panel had previously estimated, according to a study published in Science Thursday.

In 2014, the IPCC compiled five separate measurements of oceanic temperatures — all of which came in lower than the levels projected by computer-generated climate models. The newly published analysis suggests that this disparity was partially attributable to flaws in the historical record of ocean temperatures: Three recent studies that accounted for the biases inherent to the instruments used to measure ocean temperatures in previous eras all produced estimates of warming that were higher than the IPCC’s, and thus, more in line with what computer models had predicted.

The implications of this finding are not swell. Current levels of ocean warming have been sufficient to devastate coral reefs, fuel exceptionally rainy storms and hurricanes, and burden coastal cities with more frequent flooding; while the discourse about sea-level rise focuses on the threat posed by melting ice caps, warming waters have been the primary driver of the sea-level increases that we’ve seen thus far (when water heats up, it expands).

Nevertheless, the researchers believe that their findings do not suggest that all is lost — only that it will be (a bit sooner than we realized) if policy changes aren’t enacted.

“I think there’s some reason for confidence that we’ll avoid the worst-case outcomes,” Zeke Hausfather, a co-author of the study, told the New YorkTimes, “even if we’re not on track for the outcomes we want.”

People don't live in the oceans, but, their lives are effected by them, ie: Puerto Rico. There IPCC's findings are conclusive and there is no real option except to eliminate GHG and now.

There is no time to waste and the path forward is eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from human activity and not just CO2, but, all of them. We know the dangers, this is not new, the CFCs are enough to cause Earth to become a very hostile place to live if life is possible at all without an ozone layer. To begin to estimate there is no reason for alarm is self-serving and hardly appropriate on a global scale.

END GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, NOW!

Climate assessment for Ukraine.

April 2017

...In this situation, (click here) the forecast for Ukraine could be the following

In the case of business as usual, according to the World Bank, with no major changes in the economy or modes of production and consumption, the average temperature in Ukraine may rise by 3,2-4,5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

In this case, Ukraine awaits significant negative consequences primarily in the agriculture sector with increasing droughts, reduction of rainfall in the summer and peak temperatures (colder winters and hotter summers). It will have a negative impact on a number of crops and will require significant investments in the adaptation to climate change (e.g. irrigation technologies, projects for creating temperature changes resistant species, etc.). Overall, significant changes could be observed in seasonal events, such as early periods of flowering plants, and sudden cooling. These processes will have a negative impact on agriculture as well as on ecosystems as a whole.

Droughts and floods and other extreme weather events such as hurricanes are happening not only more frequent, but their devastating effects increase. Such nature disasters will become permanent, causing significant losses in the economy and threatening food security. Droughts and heatwaves, rainfall reduction in summer will also help to increase the frequency of forest fires and desertification of southern and south-eastern regions of Ukraine. In the context of floods the Carpathian mountain regions as well as the populated areas in the basins of the Dniester, Dnieper and smaller rivers are the most vulnerable. We have already experienced the floods on the Danube in 2005, on the Dniester in Transcarpathia in August 2008, the drought across Ukraine in 2007 and the record snowfall in western and central part of the country in March 2013.

At the same time the regions in the south of Ukraine may also suffer very likely due to the rising of the Black and Azov seas, which are part of the World ocean. For the last 100 years, world sea level has risen by an average of 178 mm, and continues to rise at a speed of 3.4 mm per year. Scientists warn that Crimea could become an island due to the isthmus flooding. Similarly, a  significant part of Odessa could go under water. Vylkove village may disappear altogether. Part of Kherson and Mykolayiv regions could as well find themselves underwater. This situation may also lead to the issue of access to the water resources, including drinking water....

US B-1 Bomber Shot Down Over Ukraine and Venezuela is preparing for a near border war with the USA.

How are things in Havana?

December 11, 2018
By Tom Demerly

A Russian Tupolev Tu-160 supersonic heavy bomber arrives in Venezuela on Monday.

Two Russian Tupolev/ United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Tu-160M1 (click title to entry for article - thank you) supersonic bombers, NATO codename “Blackjack”, arrived in Venezuela on Monday, Dec. 10, 2018 amid speculation about rising tensions between Russia and the U.S. along with continued questions about the status of Venezuela’s government. It’s the third deployment after those in 2003 and 2008.

The two massive Tu-160 “White Swan” bombers arrived at Simón Bolívar International Airport outside Caracas on Monday following a 10,000-kilometer (6,200-mile) flight across the Atlantic from Engels 2 Air Base, 14 kilometers (8.7 mi) east of Saratov, Russia. The aircraft belong to Russia’s elite 121st Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment, the only unit to operate the approximately 11 operational Tu-160 aircraft of 17 reported total airframes from 6950th Air Force Base.

Interestingly, each of the Tu-160 fleet is named after a prominent Russian hero. The two aircraft that deployed to Venezuela are the “Nikolay Kuznetsov” and the “Vasily Reshetnikov”. Sources have suggested that the Tu-160s may participate in joint Venezuelan/Russian training operations in the region....

Ukraine flooding.

July 28, 2008

Ukraine flooding 2008.

Kiev — Rescuers (click here) pressed on with their search efforts Monday in flood-hit western Ukraine, where at least 22 people were killed when rivers burst their banks after severe storms, officials said.

The government declared the region a national disaster area.

Hundreds of towns and villages in southwestern Ukraine were flooded after days of heavy rain. More than 40,000 houses were affected and some 20,000 people were evacuated, the Emergency Situations Ministry said on its Web site.

Heavy rains that began last week in the southwestern Carpathian Mountains caused the Prut and Dniestr rivers to overflow, officials said.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko estimated the damage at around $800 million. Deputy Prime Minister Olexandr Turchynov said the country only has a fraction — some $57 million — in a special disaster fund.

Tymoshenko later called for an emergency session of parliament, which is currently on summer recess, to allocate the money.

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor said in a statement that the United States was considering aid.

October 14, 2016
By Elena Ugrin

Severe weather affected the Odessa region in Ukraine (click here) on October 12, 2016. Heavy rainfalls and strong winds affected 10 districts, and three people were reported dead, according to the State Emergency Service (SES) of Ukraine.

The intense storm system brought flooding across at least 10 locations in Odessa. At least 55 homes and numerous roads were left flooded, SES reported. Downed trees and power lines were observed across the affected areas. 80 downed trees and 1 500 damaged ones were reported....

July 26, 2018
By Denys Krasnikov

Heavy downpours hit Kyiv, (click here) causing floods and destruction across Ukraine’s capital on July 25.

Frequent showers started over the weekend of July 21-22, but these weren’t as destructive as several rains that hit Kyiv on July 25, which flooded many underground passages and road networks, rendering them impassable. Strong winds downed dozens of trees and even bent metal billboards.

Local authorities said that they have repaired the damage, working around the clock and most of Kyiv is indeed dry. However, some roads, including ones near Shulyavska, Dorohozhytchy, Livoberezhna metro stations, remain blocked and need city services to drain the water. In particular, the intersection of Oleny Telihy Street and Kyrylivska Street and an underpass near the Dorohozhychi metro station are still flooded and require detours....