 Up to 60% of girls in Afghanistan are married by the age of 16. In poor, rural areas, 80% of those marriages are arranged, which often results in young females marrying men as old as 50 or 60. It's estimated 90% of women don't leave their home until they are married, their bodies must be guarded to protect virginity, ensure that their progeny are legitimately fathered, and even after they've been married off and move into a new home, they are still cooped up in the house. When Afghan women take action to escape victimization they are often victimized again. Women running away from home can be imprisoned, and rape victims can be convicted of adultery, or killed for compromising family honor. ¨At best, they may find refuge in a shelter, but that too is little better than a prison since it puts them in a limbo from which there is no easy exit¨ explains The Middle East Institute.
Families take their honor very seriously, for example how a young female was raped by a neighbor who had been taken into police custody for her own protection. Her family intended to kill her because the shame of her violation had compromised their honor. For most, shame leads to the rejection or elimination of the harmed woman or girl and also helps save face in suggesting to the despoiler that what was despoiled was not worth much to the family anyway. ¨ for most women, little has meaningfully changed since the days of the Taliban. It remains taboo for an Afghan woman to be seen in public without a burqa, although it is not required by law. Women and girls are still largely uneducated and confined to their homes, with few prospects for gainful employment. Girls are often the most marginalized and vulnerable ̈ says The Ray of Hope Foundation. Women in Afghanistan have little to no rights, being treated as objects instead of human beings, people acting as though they are prizes to be won over then too throw away, like they are disposable, having no say in what happens to them. Today, there are over 300 female peace activists, trying to build a better community for their children and to make their voices heard. The fight for women's rights in Afghanistan is still going on, and it seems to be far from over. Story by Emma Simpson  A football (soccer) stadium in Austria is now being turned into a forest. The project was designed and created by artist Klaus Littmann to spread awareness about climate change and deforestation. It was based off of a dystopian drawing of the same image, implying that soon, humans will only be able to view nature and wildlife in an enclosed and controlled area, like animals in a zoo. Deforestation rates sky-rocketed this year, so much so that in the Amazon rainforest, nearly 3 football fields worth of trees are being chopped down every minute, higher than it’s been in a decade.
According to CNN, just under three hundred trees were transported in from nearby nurseries to create the project. The tree variety is diverse, with tree species such as alder, aspen, white willow, hornbeam, field maple and common oak. The people who worked on the project say that they would like to be able to attract wildlife into the exhibit to fully complete the forest feeling. After the exhibition closes in October, the trees will be moved and replanted again. It was made to “stir up a range of ideas and emotions,” says Littmann. “I have never worked with living beings before and I am absolutely aware that this cannot be compared to working with a sculpture, a photo or a painting.” Littmann’s main goal is to inspire and warn people about the effects of climate change. He wants the exhibit to stay in people’s minds. Hopefully, the exhibit will be able to show people a little bit more about the direction our world is going in, and spread awareness about the effects of climate change on the place that we call home. Story by Maddie Tate Other sources: BBC news and EcoWatch  Mount Everest is a 29,029 foot peak that hundreds of people climb each year. It is located on the border of Nepal and China. So many people plan on scaling the mountain that it overcrowds and is causing deaths.
It can take months and even years to prepare for climbing Everest. You have to train and climb other hard peaks like it first. Some of the companies that provide sherpas ask about your experience in climbing, but it’s not yet required to prove it. Once you’re ready to climb, you now have to decide which route to travel. There is a Southeast ridge from Nepal and a North Ridge from Tibet. Most people choose the supposedly easier Southeast route, which is where most of the crowding is happening. Now you can embark on your 2 month journey up Everest. How does Mount Everest kill people? Well, with hundreds of people lined up to get to the top of the peak, you could be waiting for over 12 hours. With this can come lots of difficulties, such as altitude sickness. While scaling Everest, you have to stop to get used to the altitude. If you stop for too long, your breathing habits change and can cause dizziness, nausea, and even death. Because there are so many people at the peak, there is less room to get back down the mountain safely. Due to this, many people have slipped and fallen down the slope to their death. Climbing Everest might sound like a quick goal to achieve, but as you learned it takes a lot of planning to even be able to go. There are lots of risks that come with climbing the mountain as well. If you plan on climbing to the peak of Everest, make sure you are choosing the right time of year, taking safety precautions, and you know the risks. Story by Sarah Comer https://beta.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/24/mount-everest-has-gotten-so-crowded-that-climbers-are-perishing-traffic-jams/?noredirect=on https://www.livescience.com/23359-mount-everest.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/asia/how-to-climb-mount-everest/index.html  Dorian was one of the most powerful hurricanes in history, unfortunately the Bahamas got hit very badly. In most of the towns entries were blocked and the only way to get in is by boat. There are 44 counted deaths so far but nobody is sure how many uncounted deaths occurred. There was a dead man sprawled in a wrecked town, and nobody knows when, where, or how he died as well as many others. There are still corpses pinned to the ground all over the place. The hurricane wrecked neighborhood homes to pieces according to Nytimes.
In Marsh Harbour 90% of it is destroyed or damaged and they barely have any food, water, or medicine according to BBC ̈ Listen it's been a week. bodies are decomposing day by day.¨ Said McAdrian Farrington. His 5 year old son had died when the floodwaters rose in Murphy Town, a town west of Marsh Harbour. There are over 1,300 people missing in nearly a week as said by CNN . When the first sweep of the hurricane hit, over 70,000 people lost almost everything. According to nymag on Tuesday the prime minister Huburt Minnis called Dorian ̈the greatest national crisis in our country's history.¨ The winds in the Bahamas during Dorian were at 185 mph and had surges up to 23 feet high. During the storm, images showed extreme levels of rainfall and flooding. The majority of the Bahamas population is stranded on the island and can not get back because their airport is ruined and most of them do not have visa ́s to get into the US. Story by Rowen Dollar-Raynolds  Have you ever had pain and immediately thought it was the worst case possible? I know I have. Well, I am about to tell you about a man who swallowed a spoon, a woman who had a contact lens embedded in her eyelid, and a woman with parasites in her spine.
The first story is about a 38 year old man who swallowed a spoon. How you may ask? The 38 year old man took a dare from his friends and decided to swallow a metal spoon. He experienced no discomfort so he didn't feel the need to see the doctor. About a year later the man was punched in the chest and started noticing lots of discomfort and difficulty breathing, then he decided to seek medical help. The doctors took x-rays and found the spoon stuck in his esophagus. They asked him a few questions about the spoon and then told him he would be needing surgery. The surgery took about two hours and successfully removed the spoon. He made a very quick recovery and is back to normal living habits, that do not include swallowing spoons. The next medical case is about a woman who got a contact lens embedded in her eyelid. A 14 year old girl was playing badminton with her family when a birdie hit her eye. The contact lens that she had at the time slid into her eyelid and got embedded into the place were the eyelid and skull meet. She thought nothing of it until 3 decades later. Then, the 44 year old woman went to see an eye doctor because her eye was swollen and she was experiencing pain in her eye. When her doctors took the scans they \] saw that a contact lens was embedded into her eyelid. They sent her to the hospital to get it removed. She had a 4 hour eye surgery to get the contact lens out of her eye. The surgery had no complications and she restored full vision. The last story is about a woman who had parasites in her spine. A woman in France went to her doctor and said she had an electric shock that she felt was running through her legs. It turned out that she had a rare infection called Echinococcus Granulosus. Echinococcus Granulosus is a rare disease of tapeworm larvae in the spine. The disease is most commonly found in dogs or farm animals. It also can be found in unwashed fruits and vegetables. Her doctors gave her anti-parasite pills and nine months later she had no symptoms at all. Story by Charlotte Ross Sources: https://www.livescience.com/64344-10-strangest-medical-cases-of-2018.html https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/these-are-some-of-the-strangest-medical-cases-of-all-time/ https://www.livescience.com/57319-strangest-medical-cases-2016.html  For more than 3 weeks, the Amazon rainforest has been in an uncontrollable blaze. The rainforest takes up 2,000,000 square miles and 20% of oxygen produced by the land overall. No one is doubting that it is an asset to our planet and if it were to completely burn down then large parts of South America would become unlivable and agriculture would plummet. The cause is believed to be overburning small sections of the forest to provide grazing space for cattle for farming. The accusations have been aimed at the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro for promoting the forest burning for agricultural reasons.
The other consideration is the various groups of indigenous people who live in the forest. They have been attempting to warn the Brazilian government of the consequences that could happen if the burning was left unchecked, but the government neglected the warnings. Along with the 43,00o firemen sent to put out the fire the indigenous people have also been fighting the blaze, even risking their own lives. “There are 400 indigenous groups across the Amazon at large, several hundred are Brazilian-America,” commented a worker from GreenMatters. A member of the Patoxó tribe said to the media “These assholes came in and burned down [our reservation]... I want all of the media here to see this” Brazil's government does have laws protecting the people of the Amazon, though they are not heavily enforced. Andrew Miller is the advocacy director for AmazonWatch had this to say about the politics of the situation and how it relates to the United States "It’s kind of the same way Trump talks about how the U.S. has clean air and water. But the reason that is true is because of the laws and regulations enforced by the EPA, and at the same time, all of the policies he’s rolling out are working to undo all of that, It’s the same thing in Brazil. They’re touting Brazil’s constitutional protections and laws, which, if enforced, do serve as a protection. It’s not perfect, obviously, but it’s something. But this administration is doing everything it can to not obey the existing laws in the short term, and to weaken them in the long term." But there are ways to contribute to helping the Amazon. One way is to donate to AMAZON WATCH which is a website dedicated to informing people about the situation of the forest and stories of people affected and harmed by the burning. Another way that will actually save you money is to simply minimize the amount of paper and other tree products. One way that is very simple is just to use the back of whatever paper in your notebook you are using and trying to maximize the number of assignments you can do on a computer. The final way is to download a search engine called Ecosia. It works so that every search you do generates ad income for Ecosia which they donate to various causes. You can use it on your Chromebook and phone, and even though it might not be as easy to use or polished as Google it will help whatever cause Ecosia is working towards at that moment. At the time of me writing this Ecosia has planted 67 million 300 thousand trees, with an average of one tree every 0.8 seconds. Story by Colton Kelischek  All of us may already know that dinosaurs are extinct animals that lived way before we appeared. I’m going to tell you about extinction, National Geographic explains that locally extinct means that a species has died out from a native part of the world. Did you know that the Grizzly bear is locally extinct from California? NatGeo says grizzly bears are living in other parts of the world, but no longer in California. Extinct means gone from all over the world, died out, like dinosaurs, for example. Some of the popular creatures we know are endangered and fighting for survival in the wild because of habitat loss, Climate change, overhunting, and many of these threats that include human activities as a playing role. National Geographic says Extinction is a natural phenomenon and more than 90 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth aren’t alive today. Humans have just made it worse by making the process faster, according to this website. Many of the important creatures that have an important role to play in their environment and nature are going extinct says NatGeo.
On Earth there are critically endangered animals that are dying and being killed every day, making their population go down, lowering numbers to extinction. BioDiversity.org says that black rhino numbers dropped by a sobering 98%, between 1960 and 1995, making it one of the most critically endangered creatures. They also explain that it will still be a lot of work to bring them back even with all the help of Africa's conservation effort and support. Another very endangered animal on Earth is the Orangutan, which according to https://www.biologicaldiversity.org they share 98% of our genes! and sadly an easy target for hunters because they are large and slow. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org explained that the wid dog is also one of the many endangered creatures because of targeted human killings, habitat loss, and competition with large predator hunters. these creatures are all trying to survive in the wild, you never know when the population numbers go down to zero. For sure there are a lot of animals that are struggling for their species to thrive in the animal kingdom. We, humans, are always doing something, we are always involved in extinction. Even though some species are still endangered humans are trying to the possible to bring them back up. according to https://www.biologicaldiversity.org, The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973. The act protects species, which populations are incredibly low. the act has been passed in many other countries helping thousands of species fight with extinction. the act helps reserve land and forbid the killings of the species. explains that https://www.biologicaldiversity.org When the species recover they are officially out of the list. The Endangered Species Act has been incredibly effective, saving more than 99 percent of the species under its protection from extinction and putting hundreds on the road to recovery according to https://www.biologicaldiversity.org. Story by Genesis Cruz-Herrara  Wunderground.com Hurricane Dorian has taken more than homes from the Bahamas it has also taken lives. The people of the Bahamas even believe that there are way more people itś just to much damage done that you can barely see the ground.Hurricane Dorian has left the Bahamas with nothing but a lot of damage.Social media and also other news reporters notice that Dorian actually took a totally different route that it was originally supposed to take according to Thehill.com .Hurricane Dorian actually slowed down when it got over the Bahamas.It has been a total of nine days that Dorian has been a hurricane.
So far they have 42 bodies according to Thehill.com they have been sending farries to get the people to florida,well the remaining people of course. Dorian literally flatten Shantytown into massive piles of wood and steel.In total about 3,500 people have been evacuated.Cars were even submerge under the water. They have to travel 2 hours across the water in order to get to the east side because the roads are still blocked off from all the fallen buildings. You can even see the wind speeds according to the Wunderground.com. You can see the chart were the wind speed slowed down and that's when it got over the Bahamas. Due to the change of course in Dorian ́s path, It impacted the Bahamas so much that they have nothing left. It's to the point where to get to the east side you have to take a 2 hour bat drive across water.It is so bad that they can even find all the dead bodies.These hurricanes aren ́t going to make anything better. Story by Aniya Griffin  Elephants are going extinct for many reasons. The main three are Illegal killing, destruction of habitat, and people killing them for their ivory tusks.
Many people all over the world will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go on a hunting safari. This is where a group of local Africans get paid to take out people and take them to where a bunch of elephants is a kill them. The people that killed the elephants get to keep their tusks and whatever else they want on the elephant. This is illegal, but locals still do it because it is the best way to earn money, especially for the people that don’t have that much. We can help by donating to places that help with poachers (WWF, World Wildlife Fund is a good one to donate to.) Humans are wiping out elephant habitats at an alarming rate. We are taking over their habitat, for farming, and houses. Farming and development has led to large areas of natural elephant habitats being burned, chopped down, or otherwise destroyed. Because the soil is not good for crops, the farmers usually only stay there for 1-2 years, and then move on to a different piece of land, destroying another habitat, just to leave it again. After the farmers leave, the habitats are destroyed, so the elephants can’t go back, and live there. Scientists have estimated that 100 elephants are each day for their ivory tusks. Since the tusks sell for thousands of dollars, it is a popular sport to go find elephants and steal their ivory tusks. We can help by donating to Save The Elephants, and World Wildlife Fund. There have already been over 335 million dollars donated to WWF, just in the past 7 years, and over 400 million donated to Save The Elephants. Story by Astrid Laughlin  Have you ever drank out of a plastic cup or straw, and then immediately threw them out? Chances are, you have. Have you ever recycled a plastic bottle or straw?
Chances are, you've done that too. Did you know, according to National Geographic, only nine percent has been recycled. The vast majority--79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter. Meaning: at some point, much of it ends up in the oceans, the final sink. Most of it ends up gathering up into large patches. One, for example, is called the great pacific garbage patch. It is the largest accumulation zone of plastic in the world according to the ocean cleanup According to conserve the turtles,Over 1 million marine animals (including mammals, fish, sharks, turtles, and birds) are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean. That doesn't even include all the pollution that is made out of substances other than plastic. Scientists estimated that there are 100 million tons of plastic in oceans around the world, according to the ocean cleanup .There is so much plastic in the ocean that, according to the ocean cleanup,humans can clean up only clean up 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 5 years. Some scientists estimate that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050, According to national geographic The great pacific garbage patch is more than two times the size of texas, and 9 feet deep according to CNN.Thats one of the reasons it is so hard to clean it up. Another problem is the financial cost. It costs about $122 million and $489 million, according to Pricing on ocean pollutionDid you know that the money that was donated to restore the Notre dame was about the same amount of money needed for the cleanup?! The pollution on the earth is a huge problem. If we don't continue to protect our oceans, they can't continue to protect us. Here are a couple of ways you can help 1. Choose sustainable items 2. Reduce, reuse, and recycle. 3.Volunteer for cleanups in your community 4.Educate others on the situation 5.Conserve water 6.Shop wisely(organic,anti-pollution,etc) 7. Use long-lasting light bulbs and batteries 8.plant trees <3 9. Don't send chemicals into our waterways, choose non-toxic chemicals 10.drive less, walk and bike more Story by Adelina Crosson |
