The Guardian live blogged events as they occurred -- go to the link for the details. The earthquake follows the early onset of winter, according to Dawn:
“This is the heaviest pre-winter rainfall in Pakistan’s history and has affected more than 80 per cent of country,” said Dr Muhammad Hanif, spokesperson for the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD).
#4
The other day in one of badanov's gun rights postings, the idiot anti-gun writer claimed that America was the most violent country in the world. Being a tad skeptical of this claim, I did a little googling.
tl;dr: we are about middling, but surprisingly, little Guatemala is right up there at #5 when it comes to murder rate.
(yeah, I wanted to write "#5 with a bullet" but good taste prevented me)
[IsraelTimes] Severe weather sweeps across the Middle East, pounding Israel with baseball-sized hail, sending torrents of uncollected garbage through the streets of Beirut
There is always uncollected garbage in the streets of Beirut...
It's really bad now -- New York City garbage strike bad -- due to the failure of the Lebanese to put together a ruling government for so long. I haven't bothered to post articles because it is an internal political matter, while the army has been proactively managing WoT issues.
and killing six people in Egypt, five of whom were electrocuted by a fallen power cable.
The cable from a tramway in the coastal city of Alexandria landed in streets flooded with water, electrocuting the five, senior health official Magdy Hegazy said. He said a sixth person, a judge, drowned when he was trapped in his car by the floodwaters.
State news agency MENA reported heavy rains in several other Egyptian governorates, with authorities closing the port of Ain Sokhna near the southern end of the Suez Canal due to high winds and waves.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi ordered the government to provide aid to the hard-hit Alexandria area, while sandstorms and flash floods hit parts of the Sinai Peninsula. Cairo was also hit by a rare rainstorm.
In Israel, high winds knocked over cranes
...falling cranes are not just a Saudi thing...
while hail the size of baseballs struck cities across the country.
Israeli police say they had received reports that one of the cranes struck a man, although his condition was unknown. Elsewhere, trees were knocked down, including one that hit a bus, seriously injuring a passenger.
In Leb, meanwhile, heavy rains caused floodwaters to mix with mounds of uncollected garbage, raising public health concerns.
[ArabNews] JEDDAH: Although polygamy is a common practice in Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... , several young people interviewed by Arab News are opposed to it and believe that less people are entering into these unions.
Huma Sayeed, 27, argued that some women are marrying men with other wives because they are afraid of not finding husbands, particularly with the rising number of unmarried women in the Kingdom.
In addition, several women have complained that they cannot stop their husbands from marrying other women, even if they clearly state their opposition to it, she said.
Sayeed claimed that women have become more vocal in their opposition to polygamy. The fact that they do not want to share their husbands with other women has been a major contributing factor to the decline in the practice, she said.
Sayeed said she believed polygamous relationships cause emotional distress and many other problems in families.
Many of those interviewed said that they are not opposed to polygamy but it appears that men with multiple wives are unable to treat them equally as stipulated in the Qur'an.
They said men are not marrying several times these days because they simply cannot afford to do so considering the rising cost of living in the Kingdom.
Mohammed Jibrael, 30, said: "It used to be common practice in the past and many men married several times to have more kids that could support them financially. But these days, with the stress of daily life and the rising cost of living, marrying multiple wives is like looking for problems in your life."
Jibrael said that while polygamy is still being practiced, many people are avoiding it because multiple separate households place additional emotional and financial stress on families.
Ahmed R., 25, said that these types of marriages are not for everyone. His father was married twice and struggled to keep both his wives happy. "My mother was his second wife, and whenever he used to do anything for my mom his first wife used to make him feel guilty for marrying again, and would argue over minor issues," he said.
"In the end, he divorced my mother because he could not manage both of them." He said men who marry many times often cannot provide equal care and time for each wife. There was also a risk of picking up diseases, he said.
Several young people interviewed said that it was fashionable in the past to marry many times and have lots of children. However, Switzerland makes more than cheese... people were no longer doing so these days, they said.
Sohail, who lives in Jeddah, said young people do not want to add any further complications to their lives such as having large families that could be financially problematic. According to a study conducted in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which was presented at the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology Congress 2015 in Abu Dhabi, men who practiced polygamy have an increased risk of heart disease.
Korea may have to scrap the lucrative sale of T-50 trainer jets to Uzbekistan due to U.S. opposition.
The T-50, like most other advanced trainer jets, is also a decent light attack aircraft.
A government source on Friday said Korea Aerospace Industries had been in negotiations with the Uzbek government to sell 12 T-50s, but the U.S. government opposes the deal citing possible technology leaks and foreign-policy concerns. The deal could have netted Korea some US$400 million.
But since KAI developed the T-50 with technological support from Lockheed Martin of the U.S., and most core equipment including avionics and engine are U.S.-designed. That means Seoul needs the nod from Washington if it is to sell them overseas. Korea has already sold the T-50 to Indonesia, Iraq, the Philippines and Thailand.
But Uzbekistan is a murky dictatorship on ethnic lines and the U.S. is also worried that it could ratchet up tensions with neighboring countries if it bought the jets.
And provide the technology to the Rooshuns...
The Defense Ministry, Air Force and Defense Acquisition Program Administration were eager to export the T-50s to Uzbekistan. In May President Park Geun-hye and Uzbek President Islam Karimov discussed the issue during a meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, and in April the Uzbek defense minister visited Korea and signed a memorandum of understanding on military exchanges.
At the time he also sat in a T-50 simulator.
A KAI spokesman said, "The U.S. government did not approve the exports, but Uzbekistan still wants the delivery so we will try to convince Washington."
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/26/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
...An interesting thought experiment: What if the ROKs said, "Ummmm...we don't think so. We're selling the damn airplanes."
Would be worth watching to see what the Administration does, wouldn't it? Couldn't happen, though, I'm sure.
/warms up popcorn anyways
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
10/26/2015 6:03 Comments ||
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#2
I'm not sure. But aren't countries SUPPOSED to be based on ethnic lines?
#3
IIRC Uzbekistan has no great love of the Russians.
Also Russia has trouble building engines like the one in the T-50. Even with upgrades the F-16 isn't exactly the latest tech. The construction of turbine blades for super cruise engines is a tricky process. We ought to let China and Russia get a hold of a F-35 and watch them waste money trying to build them.
Posted by: Chaith Oppressor of the Lutherans1517 ||
10/26/2015 14:07 Comments ||
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#4
However, they can sell 'parts'. What assembled 'parts' look like maybe interesting.
WARSAW -- Poland took a decisive turn to the right in its parliamentary election Sunday, tossing out the centrist party that had governed for eight years for a socially conservative and Euroskeptic party that wants to keep migrants out and spend more on Poland's own poor.
An exit poll showed the conservative Law and Justice party winning with 39 percent of the vote, enough to govern alone without forming a coalition.
The pro-European Civic Platform party received 23 percent of the vote, according to the exit poll. Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz of Civic Platform conceded shortly after the exit poll was released.
Official polling results are expected Monday.
Nothing gets a politician's attention like the threat of being turned out. The Poles just did it and I'll bet the "refugee" issue as number one in the minds of Polish voters. Hello Ms. Merkel: the near future is calling...
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/26/2015 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
