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Shelling in northwestern Syria kills at least 5 civilians, activists and emergency workers say

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

IDLIB, Syria (AP) — The Syrian government early Thursday shelled a village in the rebel-held northwestern part of the country, killing at least five civilians, activists and emergency workers said.The shelling, which comes amid a rise in strikes in the rebel-held enclave in recent days, hit a family house on the outskirts of the the village of Kafr Nouran in western Aleppo province, according to opposition-held northwestern Syria’s civil defense organization known as the White Helmets.The dead included an elderly woman and three of her daughters and her son, said Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Nine others from the family were injured, it said. Neither Syria nor its key military ally Russia commented on the shelling, but Damascus says strikes in the northwestern province target armed insurgent groups. The Syrian pro-government newspaper Al-Watan said the Syrian army had targeted the al-Qaeda-linked militant group Hayat Tahrir al Sham in ...

Pattern Change Brings Sharp Cooling Following Warmest October Open In Chicago On Record; Date Of First Snowflakes Growing Closer...

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

Pattern Change Brings Sharp Cooling to MidwestOur run of ABOVE NORMAL TEMPS—five of them with daytime highs in the 80s—is ending. This JET STREAM FORECAST shows why. Steering winds are shifting in from Canada collapsing the unseasonable dome of warm air which has brought July-level temps to Chicago since this past Saturday.The dome of warm air has produced Chicago's WARMEST OCTOBER OPEN in 153 years!The NOAA SATELLITES folks post the following TRUE COLOR IMAGES—the first from this past August 31st—the second from yesterday (Tuesday, October 3rd)—and CHECK OUT COLOR CHANGE as we move into fall color season.

EU awards tender for JUPITER Exascale Supercomputer for breakthrough solutions to accelerate drug development, emergency response and climate action

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has announced the procurement for JUPITER. Once in place, JUPITER will be the most powerful computer in Europe. Moreover, as the first system in Europe to achieve exascale performance, i.e. the ability to execute over one billion billion calculations per second, it will place the EU as a world leader in supercomputing. Supported by a total EU contribution of €500 million, the new supercomputer will be located and operated by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) in Germany.Following its installation and set-up in the coming months, the JUPITER system is expected to be accessible to a wide range of European users from the end of 2024. It will help supercomputing researchers make scientific breakthroughs and contribute to finding solutions in climate change monitoring, drug and material discovery, and the need for better emergency response systems. The configuration of an additional mid-range supercomputer, Daedal...

Three-bedroom home in Dublin sells for $1.7 million

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

4462 Mazzoni Terrace – Google Street ViewA spacious house located in the 4400 block of Mazzoni Terrace in Dublin has new owners. The 2,019-square-foot property, built in 2012, was sold on Aug. 7, 2023. The $1,656,000 purchase price works out to $820 per square foot. The layout of this two-story house consists of three bedrooms and three baths. Additionally, the home comes with a two-car garage, allowing for convenient vehicle storage and additional storage space.Additional houses have recently been sold nearby:In June 2023, a 2,601-square-foot home on Lee Thompson Street in Dublin sold for $1,700,500, a price per square foot of $654. The home has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.On Cherico Lane, Dublin, in April 2023, a 2,658-square-foot home was sold for $1,700,000, a price per square foot of $640. The home has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.A 2,737-square-foot home on the 3200 block of Vittoria Loop in Dublin sold in November 2022, for $1,550,000, a price per square foot of $566. The home h...

Typhoon Koinu injures 190 and brings record-breaking winds to Taiwan

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Typhoon Koinu swept southern Taiwan on Thursday, injuring 190 people but causing no deaths as it brought pounding rain and record-breaking winds to the island, leading to school and office closures.Koinu, which means “puppy” in Japanese, made landfall early Thursday in Cape Eluanbi, the southernmost tip of Taiwan, and is expected to weaken as it moves west toward Guangdong and Fujian provinces in southern China.The typhoon brought the fastest wind ever recorded in Taiwan as it approached on Wednesday night. A weather monitoring station on the outlying Orchid Island, southeast of the main island, measured a gust of 342.7 kph (212.9 mph) at 9:53 p.m., as well as sustained winds that reached 198.7 kph (123.5 kph) at 9:40 p.m. Both values set all-time highs since Taiwan began keeping records of wind speeds in 1897, said Huang Chia-mei, head of the Central Weather Administration’s Taitung Weather Station, according to the official Central News Agency.The device meas...

2023 va camino de ser el año más caluroso, ya que septiembre bate récords de calor

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

(CNN) — Puede que el hemisferio norte esté entrando en el otoño, pero el calor extremo no ha dado tregua. Nuevos datos muestran que el mes pasado fue el septiembre más caluroso (el cuarto mes consecutivo de un calor sin precedentes), lo que ubica a 2023 firmemente en camino de ser el año más caluroso de la historia.Septiembre superó el récord mensual anterior establecido en 2020 por la asombrosa cifra de 0,5 grados Celsius, según datos publicados este miércoles por el Servicio de Cambio Climático Copernicus de la Unión Europea. Nunca hubo un mes tan anormalmente caluroso desde que comenzaron los registros de Copérnico en 1940.“Las temperaturas sin precedentes para la época del año observadas en septiembre –tras un verano récord– han batido récords por una cantidad extraordinaria”, dijo Samantha Burgess, subdirectora de Copernicus, en un comunicado.El calor extremo golpea gran parte de Sudamérica… y apenas es el final del invierno australSeptiembre se sintió m...

UK says ‘retain and explain’ statues of slave traders

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

LONDON — Museums and other cultural institutions in the U.K. have been told to “resist being driven by any politics or agenda” when they decide what to do with controversial monuments.New guidance published by the U.K. government’s Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer recommends a strategy of “retain and explain” for relics that have come under fire for their links to the slave trade or colonialism — a move that may anger campaigners seeking to remove such items.In 2020, activists dropped the statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol Harbor, amid the global Black Lives Matter protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd in the U.S.Other monuments linked to colonial Britain, including a statue of imperialist Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University, have been subject to campaigns calling for their removal.But the government — helped by academics and heritage experts on its Heritage Advisory Board — has instead argued that such monuments shoul...

Zelenskyy arrives in Spain for European Political Community summit

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

GRANADA, Spain — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Spain to attend a summit bringing together the leaders of dozens of European countries, he said on social media.“I arrived in Granada, Spain, to take part in the European Political Community Summit,” Zelenskyy wrote on X (formerly Twitter). The Ukrainian president said he would work “with partners on enhancing the European security architecture.”Zelenskyy is seeking to shore up support in Europe just as U.S. domestic politics threatens aid flows to his war-struck country, and a few days after an American government shutdown fiasco over, in part, military aid to Ukraine.“Ukraine’s key priority, particularly as winter approaches, is to strengthen air defense. We have already laid the groundwork for new agreements with partners and look forward to their approval and implementation,” Zelenskyy added on X.Close to 50 European leaders are gathering in Granada for the summit of...

France starts pulling soldiers out of Niger

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

PARIS — France started to pull troops from Niger on Thursday, the French armed forces ministry said in a statement. “The disengagement of military personnel and assets stationed in Niger begins this week. This maneuver should enable all military personnel to return to France before the end of the year,” the statement reads. In September, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would gradually withdraw its 1,500 soldiers by the end of the year. For more than two months, the French leader had taken a defiant stance toward Niger’s junta — which came to power in July after a military coup — but eventually conceded to their demand that French troops leave. Macron’s decision comes in the wake of forced withdrawals from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. After more than a decade of French presence in Africa’s Sahel region to fight against Islamist terrorism, Paris’ influence has waned significantly in recent months. Questions remain f...

Shrimpgate hits European Parliament after staffer suffers allergic reaction

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:24:33 GMT

A European Parliament staffer who says he suffered a near-death experience after eating a soup containing unadvertised shrimp at the institution’s canteen in Strasbourg is calling for action to ensure people’s safety.Martynas Norbutas, an assistant to Lithuanian MEP Bronis Ropė, wrote in a mass internal email Tuesday that he was eating soup when he “immediately realized something was wrong.” The soup, purchased at Parliament’s Strasbourg canteen, contained unadvertised shrimp, which Norbutas said he’s “extremely allergic” to. “I had to run to look for a medical point and ask for anti-allergy medicine,” he added.“I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation where you thought you had 30 minutes at most [to] take action or you will die,” Norbutas wrote in the email, which POLITICO has seen. He added that when it comes to the Parliament’s canteens, “allergens are not listed anywhere.”Norbutas subsequen...