Happy Labor Day from the staff of the Tiger Town Times!!!
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87 days of oil spreading. A count of 11 people dead and 17 injured. The biggest oil spill in U.S. history. April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded while drilling into the earth beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The rig was owned by Transocean and the oil company BP. The night of the explosion, natural gas busted through a concrete core that was recently installed. This same thing happened two years before, in 2008, without knowledge. This core was also owned by BP. According to Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill of 2010, by Richard Pallardy, the likely reason for explosion is that “both cores were likely too weak to withstand the pressure because they were composed of a concrete mixture that used nitrogen gas to accelerate curing.” The core was located 4,993 feet below the surface and extended 18,000 feet into the rock. Two days after the explosion, oil started to spread into the Gulf. It was estimated to about 1,000 barrels a day, to the government 60,000 barrels. The fail-safe system also malfunctioned because ‘the pipe had bent under the pressure of the rising gas and oil.” Previous Problems and WarningsThe U.S. Coast Guard issued citations eighteen times between 2000 and 2010, and they investigated sixteen fires and other problems. Although they were typical for the Gulf, it was not connected to the explosion and spill. According to Wikipedia “The Deepwater Horizon had other serious incidents, including one in 2008 in which 77 people were evacuated from the platform when it tilted and began to sink after a section of pipe was incorrectly removed from the platform's ballast system.” In March 2010, the rig had problems that included drilling mud in oil form, gas releases, a pipe falling into a well, and three blowout preventers leaking fluid. BP warned that the cement of the casing was not successful. BP Vice President, Patrick O’Bryan, two hours before the explosion, was on the scene to celebrate 7 years without “lost-time incident” with the rigs crew. A BP on board directed the crew to replace the drilling mud with lighter seawater. Hours before the explosion several warnings were indicated. There was reading of gas bubbling into the well. The ExplosionThe fire started at 9:56 pm on April 20th, 2010. There were 126 crew members on board. Transocean employees said the lights flickered and there was a feeling of vibration, and they instantly knew something was wrong. Wikipedia states that “after the explosion, Adrian Rose stated that abnormal pressure had accumulated inside the marine riser and as it came up it ‘expanded rapidly and ignited.’” The trapped gas escaped from the well and shot up the drill column. It burst through several seals and barriers before exploding. There was a five minute warning while alarms went off. The explosion was followed by a fire, which burned for more than a day. April 22nd the platform sunk at exactly 10:21 am. In the end only 115 of the original 126 crew members were still living.
Resources- Syria has been in a civil war since Tuesday, March 15th, 2011. The war began gradually and slowly, dating back to political situations in 1970, when an islamic sect called the Alawites took power over the Syrians by force. The Syrians were now being ruled by one of their own countries minorities, despite being taken over by outsiders in the past. Below is a picture of the Syrian Alawites and their symbol. During this time their president was Hafez al-Assad (shown to the left) and his ruling family, known as the Assads. The people pleaded for the Assads to help free and stabilize their government during the 50’s and 60’s, which at the time they were going through trouble with coups d’etats (the coups d’etats are a military group that corresponds with dictator’s orders who forces an alteration of politics and government of a country. ) Three years later, Assad and Anwar Al-Sadat came together in a war against Israel. The Soviet union backed Egypt and Syria with weapons and the U.S. backed Israel with weapons. This was called the Yom Kippur war. Yom Kippur is a religious term for a jewish fast for the jewish new year. It was called the Yom Kippur war because Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the holiday, which was very important to the jewish practices in Israel. Egypt and Syria wanted to gain back territory lost to Israel in 1967. After this war, there was a 17 year long Lebanese civil war, who was Syria’s neighbor. This dragged Syria into their war due to allied forces. Trade with the world was controlled by the Assads at this time, and during the Lebanese civil war there was lots of black markets and smuggling across the border. The smuggling included most of the food, like fruit, vegetables, tissues, sugar, tea and other important everyday items, smuggled from Lebanon and Jordan to Syria. This began a pattern of corruption as more upper class people became closer with the Alawites for their own business purposes. Of course from this, the middle and lower class were the ones who suffered from lower incomes and were affected negatively from the corruption, which led them to hate the Alawites. The regime maintained its power by filtering the media and taking expressive rights of the people away, while silencing other important voices like politicians. When Assad died, Bashar, who was his second son from London inherited the presidency. The Syrian people got hopeful for a younger and more open minded leader. Bashar promised change , and in the beginning he helped restore trade and help heal the country. However, after some time the corruption sank back in. The Syrian people began to protest against their lack of freedom. When they protested, nothing was done but damage, the protestors were stamped down by forceful military action, which led to them seeking help from other countries. The foreign governments wanted to end the alliance between Syria and Iran, too so they offered military assistance to Syria as long as the new syria would cut ties with Iran and Southern Lebanon.
The other countries urged them to rebel against minorities, especially the Alawites, and considering the Alawite group protected christians, christians were attacked too. The conflict between syria split the country up further and further, it was minorities against majorities, and once the majorities tried to stand up for themselves the war began. All the syrian people want is freedom, they want the dictatorship to end and they want fair law against corruption. Weichert, J. Brandon. Stabilizing the situation in Syria. The Weichert Report. July 13th, 2016 https://theweichertreport.com/2016/07/13/stabilizing-the-situation-in-syria/ Nassar, Nadim. What caused Syria’s civil war? WorldWatchMonitor August 16th, 2013 https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2013/08/what-caused-syrias-civil-war/ Ariana Grande is on tour right now with her Dangerous Women album. On tour with her is Little Mix and Victoria Monet. She was recently in Cleveland on February 26th performing at Quicken Loans Arena. Some of her stops that are close include Columbus, Ohio on March 9th, Indianapolis, Indiana on March 11th, and Chicago, Illinois on March 14th. The songs on her album include Moonlight, Dangerous Women, Be Alright, Into You, Side to Side, Let Me Love you, Greedy, Leave Me Lonely, Everyday, Sometimes, I Don’t Care, Bad Decisions, Touching, and Thinking Bout You. The concert was very good and entertaining, she moved around a lot and had a lot of props for each of her songs. I would highly recommend going to the concert, if you are looking to do something fun.
The area in Tennessee including the cities of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge is a beautiful forested place known for its smoky mountains and wildlife, and is also a popular tourist destination. The mountains inhabiting The Great Smoky Mountains National Park were formed by glaciers dating back to 200 million years ago. In the areas in and surrounding the smoky mountains, there are Native American reservations and stores, a Ripley’s Aquarium, over 800 miles of trails, petting zoos, mountain coasters, and thousands of log cabins in the town. The smokey mountains are a historical and important habitat to multiple species. There’s an average of two bears every square mile in the national park, which explains why the mascot of the mountains is Smokey the bear. There are also more species of trees in the national park than there are in Northern Europe, and there are over 30 species of salamanders that live in the area. A whole third of all trees in the park are over 100 years old. However, recently, in Asheville N.C. a man has been taken custody for starting two wildfires in the smokies. The wildfires spread throughout the whole city, all the forests, and destroyed acres of trees and wildlife. The wildfire began on November 22nd, and the man, Keith Eugene Mann Franklin, 49, was arrested on Wednesday November 30th. Investigators reported finding a cardboard box full of burned matches left at the scene. Although rain fell in the area on Wednesday, the fire is still a threat because of how big it has grown. The mayor, Mike Werner of Gatlinburg is discussing with officials possibly reopening the resort Friday December 2nd so that they can assess the damage and pay employees in the area. Mike says that he believes the city will pull together and recover from all this. The fire came up to the back parking lot of a hotel, trapping people from evacuating the building. It was too dangerous to drive or reach their cars. Residents said that as the fire spread, engulfing the whole town, some of the cabins started exploding.
Climate change is a change of global climate patterns, said to be linked to the frequent use of fossil fuels. Climate change may also be called global warming. Some people argue that climate change is just a myth and is not occurring, but scientists who specialize in climate change are over 90% sure that it is in fact real and are 100% sure that if it is occurring it is mainly due to humans and their activities. Several signs of climate change include rising sea levels, warm oceans, shrinking ice sheets, global temperature rise, etc. It is said that climate change also causes extreme weather events, especially severe hurricanes and wildfires. But why would anyone question whether this is real?
People who don’t believe think that climate change is extremely over exaggerated. If you read “Top 10 Reasons Climate Change is a Hoax” by Elmer Beauregard, he claims that all the things scientists predicted about climate change in 2014 are false. The reasons include that there were records for the snow, ice, and cold in 2014. Also that it actually wasn’t the “warmest year”, oceans barely rose compared to how much scientists claimed they did, and polar bears were actually thriving in 2014. Despite all those reasons, in 2015 the U.S. Senate voted that Climate Change was definitely real, along with some key factors to back up that said statement. So if it is real, what can we do to prevent it? This answer is actually pretty simple. The easiest way to help prevent climate change is to become more energy efficient. You can turn off lights while you’re not using them, unplug electronics that you’re not using, or maybe hang your clothes out to dry instead of using a dryer. You can also recycle things like plastic bottles or paper, or switch to “green power,” which is an energy that can be produced in several different natural ways. A chartered jet (flight LMI-2933) operated by LaMia was carrying Chapecoense, a soccer team from the small southern Brazilian city of Chapeco, when it crashed on Monday. It was on its way from Santa Cruz in Bolivia to Medellin’s international airport. Poor weather conditions were reported at the time of the crash (around 10 p.m. EST), and rescue operations were suspended overnight due to heavy rain. Local radio said that the same aircraft transported Argentina's national squad for a match earlier this month in Brazil, and previously had transported Venezuela's national team. In addition to players and coaches, several journalists were among the 72 passengers and nine crew members on board of the jet.
Of the 72 passengers, only 6 survived. Authorities say the six survivors included soccer players Alan Ruschel, Jackson Ragnar Follmann and Hélio Hermito Zampier, flight attendant Ximena Suarez, aircraft mechanic Erwin Tumiri, and journalist Rafael Valmorbida. Officials had initially put the number of survivors at five — but police told NBC News that Zampier was found alive some time following the other group. Amounf those who passed is the man known as their best player, Cleber Santana, a midfielder whose best years were spent in Spain with Atlético Madrid and Mallorca. Chapecoense joined Brazil's first division in 2014 for the first time since the 1970s and last week qualified for the Copa Sudamericana finals — the equivalent of the UEFA Europa League tournament — after defeating Argentina's San Lorenzo squad. They had been scheduled to play the first of the two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Medellin-based Atlético Nacional, which they were considered underdogs against, on Wednesday. "What was supposed to be a celebration has turned into a tragedy," Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez said from the search and rescue command center. Brazilian President Michel Temer declared three days of national mourning after the event. Early monday morning on the campus of The Ohio State University a radical muslim ran his car into a crowd of people heading to class. He then proceeded to jump out of his vehicle and stab a total of 11 people before being shot and killed by an OSU police officer. Officer Alan Horujko shot and killed the stabber, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, before he could do serious damage. Students were alerted via OSU’s Twitter and Facebook that there was an “active shooter”, to create panic and people to barricade themselves into their classrooms or dorm rooms. This news went nationwide extremely fast along with many rumors that people were killed by a shooter or to the extreme that he had executed someone. Along with all the rumors, ISIS had “claimed” him but this has not been confirmed nor denied, many people are saying it was an act of terror and it was due to the refugee intake into Ohio, led by Governor John Kasich. Many people are saying it’s his fault and that he had let it happen. With this attack along came the banter from Michigan football fans, with statements involving that it’s karma for “cheating” the football game. The official Twitter for Michigan Football said “Stay safe, Buckeyes.” so there was no hate involved from the actual program. All the people involved in the stabbing are in the hospital and are okay. This is a tragedy and saddening to the whole nation and especially to the people at OSU. Coulrophobia-
The irrational fear of clowns. Is it all a hoax? Since August, there have been countless sightings of creepy clowns all across the United States. These clowns have induced a nationwide panic; with reports of children being lured into the woods, violent threats towards schools on social media, and several videos on the internet of actual encounters with the (usually raging, sometimes weapon-wielding) clowns. This nationwide panic has only grown over the last few months, but the real question is whether or not these clowns are a threat. Are the clowns actually out to hurt people, or is it all just one big stunt for social media? Several people have created clown themed profiles on social media, usually as a lighthearted joke. However, one of these accounts posted violent threats toward a high school in Fontana, California. When the police investigated this account, they traced the profile back to a 14 year-old boy. Upon being asked why he did this; he said that he wanted to scare people and see how many followers he could gain. There have been several other cases like this one involving teens and adults who have caused panic with their own clown profiles online, trying to convince the people of their communities that clowns are going to attack them. Although clown accounts and sightings have caused panic, there have been no reports of severe injuries or death. The theory is that it is all just one big game, and that young pranksters dress up as clowns and scare people just for the fun and adrenaline rush. Over time, several videos have been posted on social media that show people actually spotting clowns and approaching them. In one video, a group of teens are driving on a dirt road at night when they spot a clown. They approach the clown with their car, and the clown proceeds to disappear into a field for a few seconds. Then, it comes back to the car with a chainsaw. The video ends soon after, so the outcome is unknown. In another video, a group of young people are driving when they spot a clown on the side of the road. The clown soon begins to chase their car when he sees these people watching him, and as the people attempt to speed away the clown jumps on the back of the car and seems to refuse to let go when suddenly the video ends. These videos and several others along with them have blown up all over all types of social media. This brings us back to the question - are these clowns a real threat to society? Are these videos put on the internet to warn the people about clowns, or are they all staged and made up just so people will be noticed on social media? There are several theories, apart from those previous, claiming that these clowns are not threatening at all. One of these theories is that the clowns are actors and part of an independent film that will come out near Halloween. This theory comes from a man in Green Bay, Wisconsin who said this on his Facebook page when a clown was terrorizing his community. Another theory is that they are a promotion for the remake of the 1990 movie “It” that is coming out in 2017. There is a fear that with all these clowns walking around that likely have no intention to hurt anyone, someone somewhere could take it to the next level. Overall, though, it is pretty evident that this whole thing is a hoax; and that it’s not a real danger at all. |
AuthorHanna Willoughby, |