When homeowner Paul Sekfy returned to his property he found it damaged but still intact, thanks to the firefighters. ### Inside the house he found a note from the Urunga Rural Fire Service. ### “It was our pleasure to save your house. Sorry that we could not save your sheds,” it read. “P.S. we owe you some milk.” ### Kale Hardie-Porter was part of a team sent to an area near Macksville, New South Wales,…
Behrouz Boochani spent over six years held by Australia in Papua New Guinea, most of the time in an Australian facility on the remote Manus Island. ### “I just arrived in New Zealand,” he tweeted on Thursday. “So exciting to get freedom after more than six years.” ### Boochani, an Iranian Kurd, attempted to enter Australia by boat in 2013, prompting his indefinite detention as an ‘Irregular Maritime Arrival.’ ### Amnesty International said it assisted…
Four people have died in this year’s blazes, which have been exacerbated by hot, dry weather. And now the city of Sydney — home to more than 5 million people — faces a warning that dams could run dry by 2022, according to CNN affiliate 7News. ### Since June, the greater Sydney area in New South Wales state has been under level 1 water restrictions, which limit water usage in filling pools or running hoses…
The spread of knowledge about the NSA’s surveillance programs has shaken the trust of customers in U.S. Internet companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple: especially non-U.S. customers who have discovered how weak the legal protections over their data is under U.S. law. It should come as no surprise, then, that the European Court of Justice (CJEU) has decided that United States companies can no longer be automatically trusted with the personal data of Europeans. The…
Just as scientists announced July was the hottest month in recorded history, and ahead of a major climate summit in Paris later this year, an international group of Islamic leaders on Tuesday released a public declaration calling on the religion’s 1.6 billion followers to engage on the issue of global warming and take bold action to stem its worst impacts. “What will future generations say of us, who leave them a degraded planet as our…
The most interesting storylines in our Week 12 fantasy TE rankings might involve players who could miss action this week. We know fantasy football owners will be without Travis Kelce and Hunter Henry due to Week 12 byes. We’ll also be on George Kittle watch all week to see if he makes it back from his knee injury or lets Ross Dwelley keep balling out for San Francisco. Evan Engram, too, has a foot injury…
It’s hard to believe Week 12 already has arrived in the NFL, which means there are only six weeks left of making game picks and predictions for the 2019 regular season. The prognostications both straight up and against the spread have been good so far, but a fast start needs to be backed up by a strong finish. This week, four more teams are on a bye, leaving us with another 14-game slate to navigate point spreads and…
Week 11 in the NFL is done and with six weeks left in the 2019 regular season, the league-wide standings take on a lot more meaning in terms of which teams will end up making the playoffs in the AFC and NFC. It’s time again to check in on where every team stands to know where they all might finish later, from top playoff seeds to postseason also-rans who have top draft picks in mind.…
Week 11 went mostly according to plan in the NFL. While the AFC powerhouses flexed their muscles a little more, a few of the better NFC teams had to dig deep to pull out games they desperately needed ahead of the stretch run. Still, there was enough good and bad to create some more shakeup in the league’s power struggle heading into Week 12, from the top to near the bottom. While there are seven teams…
The Israeli parliament on Thursday passed a law allowing for the force-feeding of prisoners. It has been criticized as providing “a legislative foundation for torture.” Medical organizations, including the Israeli Medical Association, have denounced force feedings as violating human rights and medical ethics. The bill passed the body, known as the Knesset, 46-40. According to a Knesset statement released Thursday: If the request [to the court for permission to force-feed a prisoner] is authorized, the…