A genocide timeline; Srebrenica massacre remembered

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 21 July 2021

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THE HAGUE - Survivors of a massacre of mainly Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, and people associated with the perpetrators of what has become known as the Srebrenica genocide, have been telling their stories in a new exhibition by the United Nations, released 26 years after the events took place.

Some 8,000 boys and men were killed by Bosnian Serb forces when they overran the town of Srebrenica during a regional war in the Balkans in July 1995, the largest atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.

The exhibition in the form of a timeline, explains how the genocide was planned and carried out.

It’s been staged by the UN’s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) based in The Hague. The IRMCT replaced the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a court also established by the UN to prosecute those persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

19 dead and dozens missing as flooding hits Germany

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 15 July 2021

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BERLIN - At least 19 people have died and dozens of people are missing in Germany after heavy flooding turned streams and streets into raging torrents, sweeping away cars and causing buildings to collapse.

Authorities in the western county of Euskirchen said eight deaths had been reported there. Rescue operations were hampered as phone and internet connections were down in part of the region, south west of Cologne.

Police in the western city of Koblenz said four people had died in Ahrweiler county, and about 50 were trapped on the roofs of their houses awaiting rescue.

Six houses collapsed overnight in the village of Schuld, in a volcanic region of rolling hills and small valleys south west of Cologne, and many people were reported missing.

The extent of the damage is still unclear after many villages were cut off by floodwater and landslides that made roads impassable. Videos posted on social media showed cars floating down streets and houses partly collapsed.

Authorities declared an emergency in the region after days of heavy rain that also affected large parts of western and central Germany, as well as neighbouring countries.

Police said four people died in separate incidents after basements were flooded in Cologne, Kamen and Wuppertal, where authorities warned that a dam could burst.

Authorities in Rhine-Sieg county, south of Cologne, ordered the evacuation of several villages below the Steinbachtal reservoir amid fears the dam there could also break.

A fireman drowned on Wednesday during rescue work in the western town of Altena and another collapsed during rescue operations at a power plant in Werdohl-Elverlingsen.

One man was missing in the eastern town of Joehstadt after disappearing while trying to secure his property from rising waters, authorities said.

Rail connections were suspended in large parts of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state.

German weather service DWD predicted the rainfall would ease Thursday.

Relentless rain through the night worsened conditions in eastern Belgium, where one person was reported drowned and at least one other was missing.

Some towns saw water levels rise to unprecedented levels and had their centres turned into gushing rivers.

Major highways were inundated and in the south and east, and the railway authority said all services were stopped, adding that “alternative transport is highly unlikely”.

In eastern Eupen, on the German border, one man was reported dead after he was swept away by a torrent, a local governor told RTBf network.

In Liege, the Meuse river could break its banks by early afternoon and spill into the heart of the city. Police warned residents to take precautionary measures.

Authorities in the southern Dutch town of Valkenburg, close to the German and Belgian borders, evacuated a care home and a hospice overnight amid flooding that turned the tourist town’s main street into a river, media reported.

The government sent 70 troops to the southern province of Limburg late on Wednesday to help with transporting evacuees and filling sandbags as rivers burst their banks. There were no reports of injuries linked to flooding in the Netherlands.

Unusually intense rain has also inundated a stretch of north-east France this week, downing trees and forcing the closure of dozens of roads. A train route to Luxembourg was disrupted, and firefighters evacuated dozens of people from homes near the Luxembourg and German border and in the Marne region, according to local broadcaster France Bleu.

The equivalent of two months of rain has fallen on some areas in the last one or two days, according to the French national weather service. With the ground already saturated, the service forecast more downpours on Thursday and issued flood warnings for 10 regions.

Branson hails ‘magical’ space trip

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Written by northsouth

Category: Europe

Published: 12 July 2021

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LONDON - Sir Richard Branson went into space on his Virgin Galactic rocket plane yesterday. Together with five colleagues, the 70-year-old travelled 53.4 miles above the Earth on VSS Unity.

He billed the flight as a test of the space tourism experience he expects to begin selling to customers from 2022.

“It’s been the experience of a lifetime,” he said. “I’ve dreamed of this moment since I was a kid but honestly, nothing can prepare you for the view of Earth from space. It’s just magical.”

Branson has successfully touched the edge of space on board a Virgin Galactic flight.

The Virgin boss was carried on board his company’s space plane in its first fully crewed test.

As well as representing a success – and major publicity coup – for the company, it also meant that Mr Branson beat fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos to space. The Amazon founder will make a similar journey on 20 July, on board one of his own Blue Origin spacecraft.

Blue Origin has argued that Mr Branson’s trip does not really count as a trip to space, since he did not cross the Kármán line that generally defines the boundary of space. Mr Branson and Virgin Galactic’s space plane Unity reached a maximum height of about 280,000 feet, or 55 miles, before gliding back down to Earth.

“Seventeen years of hard work to get us this far,” a jubilant Mr Branson said as he congratulated his team on the trip back.

Branson became the first person to blast off in his own spaceship, beating Bezos by nine days. He also became only the second septuagenarian to be launched into space.

Virgin Galactic conducted three previous test flights into space with crews of just two or three.

The flamboyant, London-born founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways wasn’t supposed to fly until later this summer. But he assigned himself to an earlier flight after Mr Bezos announced plans to ride his own rocket into space from Texas on 20 July, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Mr Branson, who has kite-surfed the English Channel and attempted to circle the world in a hot-air balloon, denied he was trying to beat Bezos.

Another one of Mr Branson’s chief rivals in the space tourism race among the world’s richest men, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, arrived in New Mexico to witness the flight, wishing Mr Branson via Twitter, “Godspeed!”

Mr Bezos likewise sent his wishes for a safe and successful flight, though he also took to Twitter to enumerate the ways in which be believes his company’s rides will be better.

Mr Bezos’ Blue Origin company intends to send tourists past the so-called Karman line, 62 miles (100km) above Earth, which is is recognized by international aviation and aerospace federations as the threshold of space.

The risks to Branson and his crew were underscored in 2007 when a rocket motor test in California’s Mojave Desert left three workers dead, and in 2014, when a Virgin Galactic rocket plane broke apart during a test flight, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.

Ever the showman, Branson insisted on a global livestream of the Sunday morning flight and invited celebrities and former space station astronauts to the company’s Spaceport America base in New Mexico.

R&B singer Khalid was on hand to perform his new single “New Normal” – a nod to the dawning of space tourism – while CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert served as the event’s master of ceremonies.

Virgin Galactic already has more than 600 reservations from would-be space tourists, with tickets initially costing $250,000 apiece. Blue Origin is waiting for Mr Bezos’ flight before announcing its ticket prices.