Odd news tonight, beginning with this from The Hill:
“We do have concerns about this vessel and we cannot rely on the grace of God that it can be safely towed to Holland,” officials from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency wrote in documents obtained by the Ipswich Star.
By Adam Barnes
Story at a glance
- A massive replica of Noah’s Ark has created a years-long stir after it was first detained at a U.K. dock.
- The 230-foot-long boat, which travelled from Holland, has been reportedly deemed unseaworthy and consequently stalled at the Orwell Bay in Ipswich for nearly two years.
- Since 2019, the 61-year-old ark has accrued more than $17,000 in fees.
From The Guardian:
Eldest daughter of King Willem-Alexander has passed school-leaving exams and will be taking gap year
Princess Amalia, the heir to the Dutch throne, has written to the prime minister to waive her right to €1.6m (£1.4m) a year in income and personal and household expenses because accepting it would make her feel “uncomfortable”.
Amalia, the eldest daughter of King Willem-Alexander, who on Thursday passed her school-leaving exams with distinction – and flew her school rucksack from the palace flagpole to celebrate – said in a handwritten letter to Mark Rutte that she did not want to take up her allowance until she had proper royal duties.
From the Los Angeles Times:
South Africa has been gripped by the mystery of whether a woman has, as has been claimed, actually given birth to 10 babies, in what would be the world’s first recorded case of decuplets.
Gosiame Thamara Sithole of Tembisa township, near Johannesburg, gave birth to the babies Monday, according to the Pretoria News, which quoted the parents. The babies — seven boys and three girls — were born prematurely and have not made a public appearance or been captured on camera, the newspaper reported.
The South African government said it was still trying to verify the claim.
From Arirang news:
"Across the border, there's growing fandom for South Korean music and tv shows. Authorities in Pyeongyang is responding by cracking down on those who access select foreign media concents, saying such violations are punishable by death.Kim Dami has the full story.
From NBC News:
"It almost felt as if they had a holy aura around them," said Adam Chang, who was hired to deliver corn and pineapples to the elephants.
By Robbie Hu and Zeerak Khurram
A herd of elephants traipsing through southwest China has captured the imagination of millions.
Monitored by hundreds of police officers assisted by drones, the massive animals reached Kunming in southern Yunnan province earlier this week after traveling some 300 miles from their native nature reserve, state-owned media reported.
From ESPN:
BEIJING -- A Chinese county official appears to have killed himself during an investigation into the deaths of 21 runners last month during an ultramarathon, state television reported Friday.
CCTV said police were notified Wednesday that a man had jumped from his apartment and died. Upon investigation, he was found to be Jingtai County Communist Party Secretary Li Zuobi. Homicide has been ruled out, according to CCTV.
From Haaretz:
At least 10 officers were filmed beating prisoners and dozens more were present, in one of the most violent events to ever take place in an Israeli jail. Only four officers were questioned, none were arrested
The lights stayed on in Wing 3 of Ketziot Prison that night. One after another, about 55 Palestinian prisoners in restraints were thrown to the floor. Security cameras filmed prison officers gathering around them, beating them with batons and kicking the prisoners, who were bent over with their hands cuffed behind their backs. The prisoners were ordered not to move or speak, remaining there for hours.
From the Times of Israel:
Local resident spots some 12 human skulls and multiple bones in bank of river running through nearby town of Oswiecim; prosecutors investigating if remains are linked to death camp
WARSAW, Poland — Polish prosecutors are investigating an apparent mass burial site revealed this month near the area of the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz.
A local resident spotted some 12 human skulls and many bones in the bank of the Sola river, running through the Polish southern town of Oswiecim, when the water level was very low, the Onet portal said Friday.
From Al Jazeera:
More than 100 buildings housing about 1,500 people in the al-Bustan area of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem face demolition.
From the BBC:
By Holly Honderich
On Saturday, London, Ontario's Muslim community will lay to rest four members of a family killed in what police say was a racially motivated attack. Here's what we know about the family.
In May 2009, Madiha Salman was preparing to begin her master's degree in environmental engineering at Western University in London, Ontario. Madiha wrote to her soon-to-be faculty adviser, Professor Jason Gerhard, thanking him for his warm welcome into the programme, which she thought was going to be "a great experience of my life".
From the Washiington Post:
The destruction to Gaza during the 11-day conflict between Hamas and Israel in May was heavy and widespread, with damage afflicting hundreds of buildings and dozens of roads, an initial United Nations analysis shows.
The data, based on preliminary analysis of satellite imagery taken on May 28, and released by the U.N. Institute for Training and Research this week, underscores warnings from human rights groups and nongovernment organizations that Israeli bombings that the military said targeted Hamas militants severely impaired the territory’s infrastructure, and that it could take years to rebuild.
From CBS News:
Colombo — Sri Lanka announced an investigation Thursday into a possible oil slick reported off its west coast, where a container ship is submerged after burning for 13 days. Coast Conservation Minister Nalaka Godahewa said local experts were asked to examine an oil patch of about 3.6 million square feet where MV X-Press Pearl ran aground earlier this month.
"I visited the area by boat yesterday and what we noticed was a thin film of oil which looked like diesel," Godahewa told reporters in Colombo.
From Reuters:
Denmark's defense ministry said there had been two Russian violations of Danish airspace on Friday near the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.
"(It is) completely unacceptable that Russian planes violate Danish airspace, and even twice in one day. Looks like deliberate action," Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said in a tweet.
From the BBC:
Hungary's ruling nationalist party has submitted legislation to ban content it sees as promoting homosexuality and gender change to minors.
The draft law would ban LGBT literature for under-18s, including educational material, and advertisements deemed to be promoting gay rights.
Several human rights groups denounced it, saying it was similar to Russian restrictions on LGBT activities.
From Gizmondo:
A new study points to an unusual cause behind the disaster that killed 200 in India this year.
In February,
a massive avalanche tore through a mountain valley in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, causing flash flooding and mudslides. A new
study has found that debris broke off a glacier above the valley and disintegrated so quickly that the resulting friction melted ice around it, causing the enormous, deadly wave of water.
Dramatic
footage of the disaster showed a torrent of debris and water thundering down a river and crashing right through a dam. The disaster left 200 dead, many of them workers at the two hydropower plants along the river that collapsed and trapped people inside.
Initial local reports said that a chunk of the nearby Nanda Devi Glacier had broken off and fallen into a nearby river, prompting the avalanche. But there was “a lot of confusion and a lot of really bad terminology going around” in the media in the days after the flood, said Dan Shugar, an associate professor of geoscience at the University of Calgary and a coauthor of the new study. He and a team of other scientists got together to figure out what really happened.
From Xinhua:
by Mahmoud Fouly
CAIRO, June 11 (Xinhua) -- In a dark atmosphere backstage with dim bluish light in the background, shapes of the Sphinx and the three Great Pyramids of Egypt were put in place as the setting, while marionettists were preparing their colorful string puppets, including many in ancient Egyptian costumes.
The time was ticking at Cairo Puppet Theater, the curtain was about to be raised and everyone was in a hurry minutes before the show. But on the other side of the curtain, the audience, mostly children with their parents, were relaxing in their seats and waiting to embark on a "Journey Through Beautiful Time."
From France24:
Dengue fever infections dropped dramatically in an Indonesian study where a bacteria was introduced into disease-carrying mosquitoes, offering hope in the battle against an illness that sickens millions annually around the world.
Results of the three-year study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week, found that infecting dengue-carrying mosquitoes with a harmless bacteria called Wolbachia led to a 77 percent drop in human cases.
From the New York Times
Crowds of delivery drivers responding to a rush of online orders violated safe distancing measures as they flooded unprepared restaurants.