Category Archives: Fail!

Wild crane attacks photo-taking tourists in Jilin nature reserve: Shanghaiist

Two tourists were abruptly struck by a red-crowned crane as they attempted to take pictures of it at the National Nature Reserve in Tongyu County of Jilin Province on Wednesday afternoon, China News reported, reminding visitors to the park and across the nation that this is one red-crowned crane you don’t wanna f##k with.

via Wild crane attacks photo-taking tourists in Jilin nature reserve: Shanghaiist.

Creepy/Fail: Egypt starts monitoring online communications | Egyptian Streets

Egypt’s interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim had released a statement claiming the regulation was intended to focus on developing Egypt’s security by monitoring criminal activity online.

The Minister, in June, added that the monitoring would provide the Ministry with information about illegal topics and issues against public morals and traditions.

A report leaked by state media newspaper Al-Ahram in June revealed that the monitoring will also aim to “create a database for influential persons and persons of interests and registering their connections with others.”

Egyptian social media users have reacted strongly against the move to monitor communications, criticizing its negative impacts on privacy and freedom of self-expression.

via Egypt starts monitoring online communications | Egyptian Streets.

“Comfort women” who serviced U.S. soldiers demand justice – Salon.com

The lawsuit alleges that, since 1957, poor and undereducated South Korean women were pressured into prostitution in those government-designated zones around American military bases. Authorities should be legally held responsible because they turned a blind eye and therefore promoted the trade, according to the filing.

Former prostitutes say that the government rounded up bar workers — some of whom were girls in their mid-teens — and mandated that they undergo forced STD testing. The ones who tested positive for diseases were held against their will in quarantine and treatment centers, say the plaintiffs. “It was terrible. And we believe that the government was responsible for its negligence,” said Kim, the former sex worker, who was tested multiple times.

The government also sponsored etiquette and English-language classes for these hostesses, where they were praised for contributing to economic development and national security.

Scholars say the South Korean government, run by three dictators from the 1960s to 1980s, sought to please the US military out of fear that it would depart, while bringing in US dollars to buttress this struggling economy. In the past, the South Korean government has denied encouraging prostitution. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family would not comment on the litigation.

via “Comfort women” who serviced U.S. soldiers demand justice – Salon.com.

ISIS seizes 16 Kurdish villages in north Syria: Kurds | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

ISIS fighters have seized 16 Kurdish villages in northern Syria in a major advance towards the city of Ayn al-Arab at the border with Turkey, a Kurdish military official and an activist group said Thursday.

Ocalan Iso, a commander in Kurdish armed group YPG, told Reuters that ISIS fighters were using heavy weapons including tanks in their attack near the city, known as Kobani in Kurdish. He also said the Syrian Kurds were seeking support from other groups including the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) to fend off the advance by ISIS. Speaking via Skype, he said they wanted support “in all military aspects.”

Rami Abdel-Rahman, founder of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the villages had been seized in an ISIS advance that started Wednesday. “They have a large number of fighters,” he told Reuters by phone.

via ISIS seizes 16 Kurdish villages in north Syria: Kurds | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

IRIN Africa | Turning away the Ebola dying | Guinea | Liberia | Sierra Leone | Aid Policy | Governance | Health & Nutrition | Human Rights

Pierre Trbovic, an anthropologist from Belgium working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at the ELWA Ebola Treatment Centre, one of two in the capital, Monrovia, was forced to turn patients away: He had no choice – the centre was full and could not safely admit more patients.

“The first person I had to turn away was a father who had brought in his sick daughter in the trunk of his car. He was an educated man, and he pleaded [with] me to take her, saying while he knew we couldn’t save her life, we could save the rest of his family from her. At that point I had to go behind one of the tents to cry,” says Trbovic in a written testimony.

Other families pulled up in cars, let the sick out and drove off, abandoning them. One mother tried to leave her baby on a chair hoping that doctors would have no choice but to care for the child.

In streamed the patients, “but there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t send them anywhere else – everywhere was, and still is, full.”

Health workers are already completely overwhelmed by the brutal job of providing palliative care for Ebola sufferers: Each morning dead bodies must be body-bagged, and blood, faeces and vomit cleaned from the ward – and if they take on more patients, they risk lowering their safety guard which could prove fatal.

via IRIN Africa | Turning away the Ebola dying | Guinea | Liberia | Sierra Leone | Aid Policy | Governance | Health & Nutrition | Human Rights.

Jewish government supported extremists try to change status quo at Al-Aqsa – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

JBWC – just because we can – this is the new Israeli policy and ideology of an occupier and attempting to do to Palestine and Islam what colonialist Britain could not do to either Ireland, or South Africa. Each week, Israeli actions become more and more provocative. The visits are longer, and the ban on Jewish prayers at the mosque compound are increasingly ignored. What began with Jewish visitors inaudibly mumbling a few words is becoming louder and louder. Most Jewish intruders wear prayer clothes, often under their regular clothes, which points to their intention of holding prayers on the mosque compound.

The peace treaty Jordan signed with Israel contains provisions on the protection of holy sites in Jerusalem. Jordan has confronted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the visits, but was told that no change had occurred to the status quo, in place since 1967. Jordan also signed an agreement with the Palestinian government regarding Jerusalem.

via Jewish extremists try to change status quo at Al-Aqsa – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

The Mathematics of Ebola Trigger Stark Warnings: Act Now or Regret It | WIRED

We need someone to take over the position of “command and control.” The United Nations is the only international organization that can direct the immense amount of medical, public health and humanitarian aid that must come from many different countries and nongovernmental groups to smother this epidemic. Thus far it has played at best a collaborating role, and with everyone in charge, no one is in charge.

A Security Council resolution could give the United Nations total responsibility for controlling the outbreak, while respecting West African nations’ sovereignty as much as possible. The United Nations could, for instance, secure aircraft and landing rights…

The United Nations should provide whatever number of beds are needed; the World Health Organization has recommended 1,500, but we may need thousands more. It should also coordinate the recruitment and training around the world of medical and nursing staff, in particular by bringing in local residents who have survived Ebola, and are no longer at risk of infection. Many countries are pledging medical resources, but donations will not result in an effective treatment system if no single group is responsible for coordinating them.

I’ve spent enough time around public health people, in the US and in the field, to understand that they prefer to express themselves conservatively. So when they indulge in apocalyptic language, it is unusual, and notable.

via The Mathematics of Ebola Trigger Stark Warnings: Act Now or Regret It | WIRED.

Air Bag Flaw, Long Known to Honda and Takata, Led to Recalls – NYTimes.com

Air Bag Flaw, Long Known to Honda and Takata, Led to Recalls – NYTimes.com.

The scariest kind of quality fail – random

In June, a low-speed accident involving a 2005 Honda Accord in Los Angeles caused the car’s driver air bag “to ‘detonate,’ sending hot metal and plastic shrapnel into the cabin,” according to a complaint filed with the safety agency. That car had not been recalled, but Honda has since expanded its recall to include vehicles registered in California.

Officials at Honda and Takata, and regulators in the United States and Japan, say they cannot explain why the ruptures continue.

SkyTruth: Disappearing Mississippi Delta, 1972 – 2014

Like many folks, we were astonished by the recent ProPublica / The Lens mapping work showing the tremendous loss of marshland in the Mississippi Delta and adjacent parts of the Gulf coast.  There is an unholy alliance of factors responsible:  the rise in sea level due to melting onshore glaciers and icepack, and thermal expansion of the ocean, two consequences of global warming; the natural, inexorable subsidence of the Delta as that huge pile of sediment compresses and sinks under it’s own awesome weight, actually depressing the Earth’s crust; the diversion of Mississippi River sediments away from the marshes and out into the Gulf, thanks to an impressive system of dams, levees, and pumps designed to control flooding and aid navigation; and the accelerated erosion of marshlands thanks to the criss-crossing network of ditches and canals dug willy-nilly by the oil and gas industry over many decades — the death by 1,000 cuts.

via SkyTruth: Disappearing Mississippi Delta, 1972 – 2014.