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Search On Tasmania

1/27/2020

 
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Tasmanian tigers are very elusive and kill many Tasmanian wildlife. Many farmers are complaining because their animals are being killed mainly sheep. Farmers have been exploring the land surrounding their farm they believe it is the Tasmanian tiger
Killing their sheep It is very hard to find them. We know that they use to be alive we even had some in captivity scientists studied them because of their unique traits. They have stripes like a tiger but are the size of a wolf. Some people disregard the creature and call it a myth when this creature was very much alive. Personally I believe this creature is alive we just need to look harder.


Recently farmers have found sheep bones but the remains were gruesomely torn up a tiger would not waste a bit of the animal it eats. These creatures are believed to be extinct 80 years ago but a farmer in Tasmania says he saw one of these creatures 2 months ago on more of a scientific note These creatures like to hide and their scientific name is thylacine.

I think this animal is a truly magnificent animal. It could be wandering around without a care in the world that Humans are trying to find them all day. They might be experts at hunting, tracking, And covering their steps. A big disprover is that scientists never find feces. Scientists would like to someday find this animal. For its magnificence in tracking and hiding. We can compare this creature to bigfoot or other cryptozoological creatures. Thylacine are truly magical creatures.

Story by Daniel Kneale

Sources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/the-obsessive-search-for-the-tasmanian-tiger

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/australia/tasmanian-tiger-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

https://www.foxnews.com/science/tasmanian-tiger-seen-80-years-after-extinct


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Taal Volcano Eruption

1/17/2020

 
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Mountain Taal has been erupting and causing earthquakes. It doesn't look good for the people that live close to the mountain. Ash is falling from the sky which is making it very hard for people to drive.Its causing a really big mess. Most of the people won't ́t leave because they have farms to attend to. Many people depend on the rivers and water that is close to the mountain. 459,000 people live in the danger zone.

A woman and her six children got trapped in the house by the falling ash from the volcano.Some parents don't sleep so they can make sure nothing will fall on their children. They are currently at a level 5 which means a hazardous eruption is underway. In 1754 Taal ́s eruption lasted 6 months. The military has sent 20 vehicles and 120 personnel. In many cities the power lies are down, there is no more fresh water to use and the cities have been ghosted. 
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8,000 people have already been evacuated. Taal is the Philippine´s second most active volcano.There has been 75 earthquakes so far. 32 of the earthquakes are ranking 2 and higher. Many residents are wearing masks because of the ash. Taal is also a complex volcano because it doesn't have a vent or cone. The people are scared but aren't going anywhere unless they are forced to.

Story by Aniya Griffin

Sources:
CNN10
SkyNews
BBC News

Chinese Concentration Camps

1/17/2020

 
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So as you may have heard about the concentration camps in china that are detaining Muslims and destroying their culture. They claim its part of a counter-terrorist effort.  With is an obvious lie because these are everyday people living there lives and the government is detaining them just because they go to a mosque or contact people in places like Turkey and Afghanistan. This a violation of human rights but the Chinese government is not releasing anything about the camps. These places have been apart of a crackdown to prevent terrorism. The crackdown has been justified from the 9/11 attacks. Wang Yi the Chinese foreign minister said that the state-led ‘training system’ rescued those who have been eroded by extreme thoughts and eradicated terrorism from its source. Even though a lot of the people in the camps are completely innocent. The Chinese say its an internal issue. 

    

The Uighur activist has documented 500 camps in the Xinjiang area. About one million people ethnic minorities have been detained. As you can imagine this is a big problem. In the camps, some people have reported sexual assault/ abuse according to the council of foreign relationships. They make the people in the camps renounce Islam. They also make them sing praises to communism. Some detainees have contemplated suicide or seen others commit or attempt it. Some people have been tortured and subjected to sleep deprivation. It really is just a messed up situation.


    So overall the conditions there are really bad. The actions of the Chinese are very unethical. The US has waged sanctions against senior officials in Xinjiang. Sadly they still say the camps are the same as boarding schools, there not. Some people reports like Schriver say this event is like the actions of the Nazis. Schriver is the assistant secretary of defense. The US has taken some action and is pushing to take more action. Although in the meantime I pray that this issue is resolved.

​Story by Garrison Hunt

The Devastation of the Australian Wildfires

1/17/2020

 
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Have you ever been to West Virginia? West Virginia has an area of roughly 15 million acres. In Australia, 18 million acres of land have been burned. That means that an area bigger than the whole state of West Virginia has gone up in flames in Australia. Thousands of homes have burned, about 30 human lives have been lost, and close to a billion animals have died. Australia’s landscape is changed forever and the cost is in the billions. This year’s Australian Wildfires are one of the most devastating fires that Australia has ever encountered in its history.

According to AP News, 25,000 square miles have been burned mostly in Victoria and New South Wales, the most populated areas in the country. These areas are located in the Southern and Southeastern parts of Australia. However, there are plenty of other fires occurring all over the continent of Australia. The fires were caused mainly by the hot, dry and windy weather. Roughly 2,000 homes have been burned down. 1 billion animals have died due to the fires as well. On Kangaroo Island itself, an island just off the coast of Australia, about 25,000 koalas have died which is half of the whole koala population on Kangaroo Island. 

Since there have been various losses that Australia has experienced during this wildfire, Australia has a pretty expensive repair cost to fix all of their casualties. According to ACCU Weather, the cost of repair is now exceeding a price of $100 billion. This cost includes damage to homes and businesses, job and wage losses, school closures and the cost of power outages, destruction to wildlife, and countless other reasons. Many people are helping people that have been affected by the fires such as The Australian Red Cross sending 1,285 staff members to provide support to displaced people sheltering in about 70 evacuation and recovery centers. Also, the Salvation Army is donating a large amount of money towards the repair.

Although this wildfire is one of the most deadly wildfires Australia has ever experienced, it is not the worst wildfire ever in Australia. The worst wildfire in Australia occurred in 2009. The fire caused 173 deaths and 2,000 homes lost. The time in between the wildfires in Australia has drastically decreased. According to The Conversation, the deadliest bushfires in the past 200 years took place in 1851, 1939, 1983, 2009, and 2019-2020. The time over the 2 most recent deadly bushfires in Australia has decreased by 16 years compared to wildfires before.
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To sum up Australia’s Wildfires in 2019, the repair cost will most likely take a long time to pay, but the ways that people are supporting the people affected by the wildfires are outstanding. Since the time between the occurrence of wildfires in Australia is decreasing, I wonder if and when there will be another wildfire in Australia and how bad would it be?

Story by Tate Lloyd

The United States and Iran: A History of Conflict and Misunderstanding

1/15/2020

 
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​The United States and Iran have been on the brink of war for a long time, accentuated by recent events such as the airstrike and killing of Iranian
Major General Qasem Soleimani. While President Donald Trump insists that Soleimani carried out “evil crimes” and is a “son of a b----,” many Democrats believe that it was unjust to approve an airstrike against Soleimani without asking Congress first. Popular and reputable news sources such as BBC, CNN, and PBS (wow, lot’s of acronyms) have assembled timelines of the conflict between the two countries, and we’ll go through some of the most important moments that defined this dispute. 


1950-1969

PBS’s timeline goes way back to the 1920s, so I highly suggest you go back and look at their timeline. The three agencies agree that the first major event of this disagreement was the overthrowing of the elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh. The CIA supported the coup d’etat because Mossadegh has moved to nationalize the country’s oil fields. The US has always relied heavily on the Middle Eastern oil fields and this would have been considered a great blow to our country. In 1957, an Iranian intelligence organization called SAVAK was formed, but it was later blamed for the torture and death of several thousand political prisoners.

1970-1989

 In 1979, the US-backed Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, is forced to leave the country amid protests and demonstrations. Popular religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile and encourages the “brewing revolution.” He renames the country to the Islamic Republic of Iran. From 1979 to 1981, the storming and siege of the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran is carried out by Islamic students. Dozens of Americans hostages are held inside for 444 days and are released the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. The Iranians basically hated former President Jimmy Carter’s guts because Carter had allowed the exiled Shah (Pahlavi) to enter the United States for medical conditions. 

n September 1980, in the midst of the US Embassy hostage situation, the Iran-Iraq war begins. The Iran-Contra scandal in 1985 (through 1987) was the biggest crisis during the Reagan Administration. The US secretly shipped guns to Iran “allegedly in exchange for Tehran's help in freeing US hostages held by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon,” the BBC timeline reports. Unfortunately, some of the profits were used to fund militias in Nicaragua who were trying to overthrow the “socialist regime.” In July 1988, American naval ship USS  Vincennes shoots down Iranian passenger plane en route to Dubai, killing all 290 passengers on board. Most passengers were Iranian pilgrims on their way to Mecca, says PBS.

    1990-present

Qasem Soleimani is appointed head of the Quds Force in 1997. Former US President George W. Bush refers to Iran as the “axis of evil” along with other countries Iraq and North Korea. His speech causes outrage in Iran; Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi calls Bush’s comments “arrogant” and an “interference in internal affairs.” The International Atomic Energy Agency says that Iran admitted to producing enriched plutonium and agrees to more United Nations inspections of their nuclear plants. A nuclear agreement is announced in 2015, signed by Iran, the United States, United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, and Germany (later, the US withdraws from the agreement). The nuclear agreement was made and signed during the Obama Administration.

n 2017, President Trump signs an executive order for a travel ban for Islamic countries, including Iran. Iran called the ban “an obvious insult to the Islamic world” and began conducting ballistic tests. In May 2018, President Trump pulled out of the nuclear agreement with Iran and began a “maximum pressure campaign” to force Iran to make a new deal. According to PBS, international nuclear watchdogs later confirmed that Iran had exceeded its nuclear limits. April 8, 2019, President Trump declares Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “foreign terrorist organization.” Iran responds by calling the United States a “state sponsor of terrorism.”
    
CNN reports, “Tensions further escalate after attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, as well as the downing of a US drone, which Washington and its allies blame on Iran.” Iranian forces shoot down a US drone over the Strait of Hormuz, which is a joint Iran-Oman territory.

On January 3, 2020 --the event that’s been in the news for so long-- Major General Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in the Baghdad airport. Thousands take to the streets to mourn Soleimani, calling him a martyr. A report says over 50 people were trampled in the protesting. 


Tehran launched missiles at two US bases in Iran: Al Asad air base and a camp in Erbil. The damage was light and President Trump said that no US personnel were killed. 

On the 8th of January, a Boeing 737 crashed shortly after takeoff. All 176 people were killed; 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, 4 Afghans, three Germans, and 3 British nationalists. Iran announced that it had accidentally shot down the aircraft with two Russian-made missiles after mounting evidence pointed that way.  The admission “sparked protest in Tehran and elsewhere against Iranian leaders.”

So what now?


Most news sources believe that President Trump’s decision to deal with the situation diplomatically is a sign that tensions are cooling off. While beliefs are split on this issue, some think that Iran intentionally missed important structures to avoid loss of live. Army General Mark Milley, however, said that Iran “intended to cause structural damage, destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft, and to kill personnel.” CNN journalist Jake Tapper wrote on Twitter, “Pentagon official tells me that many US military leaders think Iran deliberately chose targets that would not result in loss of life.”

While some worry of a World War 3, news sources agree that another world war is not on the horizon.


Story by 
Caroline Barton

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