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The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) overwhelmingly voted on Thursday in favor of a resolution aimed at ensuring accountability and achieving justice in Palestine, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates announced in a statement.

The Palestinian Ministry welcomed the UNHRC Resolution, thanking the member states that had voted in favor of the draft resolution submitted by the State of Palestine, and adding that the vote reflects “the principled position of the member states on the importance of accountability of the Israeli colonial and apartheid regime”.

According to the statement, 37 countries have voted in favor of the Resolution, including Arab and European countries, China and important countries in Africa and Asia, while seven countries have abstained, namely Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Cameroon, the Marshall Islands, India, Nepal and Honduras. Malawi, Brazil, and the United States voted against the resolution.

The Ministry said that “the international consensus and the vote in favor of Palestine’s resolutions is a form of protection for the Palestinian people and preserving their rights, which would ultimately lead to the dismantling of the Israeli apartheid regime.”

The Ministry urged the international community “to hold Israel and Israeli war criminals to account,” and stressed that “the policy of double standards and selectivity in implementing the rules of international law will undermine the rule-based international order”.

#news # palestine #un #unhrc #gaza

Dubai has successfully made its own fake rain in a bid to tackle the city’s scorching temperatures.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has an average rainfall of just four inches, and often sees temperatures up to 50°C, so the Middle Eastern country has turned to technology to help change this.

It was recently announced that the UAE had funded a project that would see drones being able to control the weather, and from the looks of recent scenes in Dubai, it’s worked.

The country paid $15 million (£10.8 million) towards nine different rain-enhancement projects, part of which was given to the University of Reading, who are behind the creation of the weather-controlling drones.

As to how the drones work, they zap clouds with an electric charge which then apparently charges the droplets in the clouds. According to scientists, this charge makes the droplets more likely to fall as rain.

This technique is preferred by most places as it doesn’t involve the use of chemicals, The Independent reports.

Dubai was first on the list for the drones to be trialled, and they successfully created heavy downpour in the city. Other areas of UAE reported rainfall on Thursday, July 15, as well.

Usually at this time of year, Dubai sees highs of 41°C alongside zero days of rain.

Several videos have been shared on the Official UAE Weather’s Instagram to demonstrate the drones’ success and, at a glance, you wouldn’t think the videos were taken in Dubai.

The drones have worked so well that yellow weather warnings have been issued in parts of the country.

As of Sunday, July 18, the rainfall was said to be continuing throughout the UAE, which the National Centre of Meteorology credited cloud seeding efforts for, the Khaleej Times reports.

Via NIAMH SHACKLETON at https://www.unilad.co.uk/technology/dubai-is-creating-fake-rain-to-battle-50c-heat

The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is by far the closest such object to us, about 27,000 light-years away. Its relative proximity makes it appear much brighter to us than other similar sources and provides astronomers with a unique opportunity to probe what happens when gas clouds or other objects get close to the "edge" of a black hole.
Sgr A* has been monitored at radio wavelengths since its discovery in the 1950's. Astronomers model that on average Sgr A* is accreting material at a few hundredths of an Earth-mass per year,a relatively very low rate. Subsequent infrared, submillimeter,and X-ray observations confirmed this variability but also discovered that the object often flares,with the brightness thereby increasing by as much as a factor of one hundred in X-rays.
In July 2019 CfA astronomers obtained simultaneous near infrared observations with the IRAC camera on Spitzer, with the GRAVITY interferometer at the European Southern Observatory,and with NASA's Chandra and NuStar X-ray observatories. SgrA* serendipitously underwent a major flaring event during these observations,enabling theoreticians for the first time to model a flare in considerable detail.
Relativistic electrons moving in magnetic fields emit photons by a process known as synchrotron radiation but there is also a second process possible in which photons are scattered off the electrons and thereby acquire additional energy, becoming X-ray photons. The most probable scenario is the one in which the infrared flare was produced by the first process but with the X-ray flare produced by the second process.This conclusion has several implications for the activity around this supermassive black hole, including that the electron densities and magnetic fields are comparable in magnitude to those under average conditions but that sustained particle acceleration is required to maintain the observed flare.Although the models successfully match many aspects of the flare emission, the measurements are not able to constrain the detailed physics behind the particle acceleration; these are left to future research.
by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Silk was first cultivated in China, as early as the mid-third millennium B.C. This art was, according to legend, discovered by the wife of the Yellow Emperor. While she was drinking tea in the shade of a tree, a cocoon fell into her cup. Instead of throwing it away, she examined it and discovered that pulling on a strand could completely unravel it.

Traditionally, silk production carefully guarded as a state secret. Revealing the confidential methods of sericulture was punishable by death. Centuries later, it would be these silken threads that would weave together a vast trade network, a tangle of trade routes linked the Far East and Europe, connecting at various points with other routes taking trade to and from India. The unifying name “Silk Road” is attributed to a 19th-century German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. Over time, the name stuck becoming a catchall for the mesh of trade routes across Central Asia.

The Chinese did not make an effort to sell silk outside of their country until circumstances forced them to do so. To halt the incursions of the nomadic Xiongnu tribes Han emperor Wudi attempted an alliance with the Yuezhi, a Central Asian tribe, enemies of the Xiongnu. Zhang Qian, a young officer of the emperor’s palace guard, was appointed as the leader of the diplomatic mission.

Zhang Qian learned a great deal about the mysterious lands to the west. In the Fergana Valley, north of the Hindu Kush, he observed horses much larger than those in China. He recognized that these beasts would be valuable military additions to Chinese forces. While in Parthia, he also made contact with the remnants of the Hellenist culture established by Alexander the Great in Central Asia, marking the first major contact between China and Indo-European society. Most important of all, he identified a widespread desire for Chinese silk.

The Han dynasty saw the advantages of westward trade, especially obtaining the superior Fergana horses. Officials knew they could trade silk for these horses. In time, this trade would plug China into the lucrative markets of the West, including the booming Roman world.

Originally published by https://www.nationalgeographic.com

A newly discovered crescent of galaxies spanning 3.3 billion light-years is among the largest known structures in the universe and challenges some of astronomers' most basic assumptions about the cosmos.

The epic arrangement, called the Giant Arc, consists of galaxies, galactic clusters, and lots of gas and dust. It is located 9.2 billion light-years away and stretches across roughly a 15th of the observable universe.

But the finding, which will take its place in the list of biggest things in the cosmos, undermines a bedrock expectation about the universe. Astronomers have long adhered to what's known as the cosmological principle, which states that, at the largest scales, matter is more or less evenly distributed throughout space.

The Giant Arc bigger than other enormous assemblies, such as the Sloan Great Wall and the South Pole Wall, each of which are dwarfed by even larger cosmic features.

"There have been a number of large-scale structures discovered over the years," Clowes told Live Science. "They're so large, you wonder if they're compatible with the cosmological principle."

The fact that such colossal entities have clumped together in particular corners of the cosmos indicates that perhaps material isn’t distributed evenly around the universe.

But the current standard model of the universe is founded on the cosmological principle, Lopez added. "If we're finding it not to be true, maybe we need to start looking at a different set of theories or rules."

Daniel Pomarède, a cosmographer at Paris-Saclay University in France who co-discovered the South Pole Wall, agreed that the cosmological principle should dictate a theoretical limit to the size of cosmic entities.

Some research has suggested that structures should reach a certain size and then be unable to get larger, Pomarède told Live Science. "Instead, we keep finding these bigger and bigger structures."

Yet he isn't quite ready to toss out the cosmological principle, which has been used in models of the universe for about a century. "It would be very bold to say that it will be replaced by something else," he said.

Originally published on Live Science.

Thanks to his travelogue, “The Travels of Marco Polo”, the man who headed east in the 13th century, from Europe to Asia, became a household name. Though not many know, there was another traveler with accomplishments just as remarkable. Rabban Bar Sauma followed the Silk Road in the 1275 after leaving China, managing to go as far as Baghdad, Constantinople and France meeting khans, kings, and a pope.

The initial objective of the trip was only to walk in the Holy Land but in the course of his extraordinary travels, Bar Sauma would later form an unlikely Mongol-Christian alliance to seek Europe’s help against Muslim armies.

After two years of crossing deserts and mountains they reached Baghdad, seat of the catholicos, or patriarch, of the Nestorian Church. Unfortunately, conflict in the Holy Land made their wish to reach Jerusalem impossible, so they traveled to Armenia instead before being recalled to Baghdad by the Nestorian catholicos, Denha I.

The catholicos Denha, Abagha died in 1282 and was briefly succeeded by his brother, and then, by his son, Arghun in 1284. In this period, the Egyptian Mamluk Muslims had gained control of the Holy Land and were posing a military threat to the khanate. The ilkhan elected Bar Sauma as head of a delegation to Europe to convince its leaders to join a military campaign against their common enemy. Then in his 60s, Bar Sauma began traveling west in 1287 on a new journey, with Constantinople as his first destination among many.

The Byzantine capital made a colossal impact on Bar Sauma. It was his first time in an entirely Christian city. From Constantinople he traveled to Italy in June 1287. His first stop was Rome, where he hoped to convince the pope to declare a new crusade to take the Holy Land from the Mamluks. The pope declined the alliance owing to the fragility of the internal situation in Europe and exhorted the ilkhan to convert to Christianity.

Rabban Bar Sauma’s long journey had come to an end. He headed back east and would die in Baghdad in 1294.

Via GIORGIO PIRAZZINI at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/article/rabban-bar-sauma-epic-east-to-west-travels-rival-marco-polo

Nations around the world would need to immediately stop approving new coal-fired power plants and new oil and gas fields and quickly phase out gasoline-powered vehicles if they want to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change, the world’s leading energy agency said Tuesday.

In a sweeping new report, the International Energy Agency issued a detailed road map of what it would take for the world’s nations to slash carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050. That would very likely keep the average global temperature from increasing 1.5 Celsius above preindustrial levels — the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth faces irreversible damage.

While academics and environmentalists have made similar recommendations before, this is the first time the International Energy Agency has outlined ways to accomplish such drastic cuts in emissions.

Several major economies, including the United States and the European Union, have recently pledged to zero out their emissions responsible for global warming by midcentury. But many world leaders have not yet come to grips with the extraordinary transformation of the global energy system that is required to do so, the agency warned.

President Biden has made climate action a top priority of his administration and is pushing for an aggressive pivot away from fossil fuels at home and abroad. But his own pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gases at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade faces significant political obstacles. And at a virtual summit of 40 world leaders that Mr. Biden hosted last month, Japan, Canada and Britain joined the European Union in committing to steeper cuts but China, India and Russia did not.

China still has plans for dozens of new coal-fired power plants, although President Xi Jinping said his country would “strictly limit increasing coal consumption” in the next five years. And companies in the United States and Canada are still targeting new oil and gas fields for development.

Via Brad Plumer at nytimes.com/2021/05/18/climate/climate-change-emissions-IEA.html

Want to find life in an exotic corner of the solar system like Saturn's icy moon Enceladus? First, you have to make sure you don't get all excited about a detection only to realize you've just discovered hitchhiking germs from Earth.

To avoid that letdown, planetary scientists think carefully about how to avoid contaminating any instruments designed to look for traces of life on other worlds or moons.

That's true even of missions that will likely never fly.

So when Shannon MacKenzie, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, and her colleagues began work on a mission concept study for a life-detection mission to Enceladus, they knew they needed to be careful about what their hypothetical spacecraft was bringing from Earth in order to make the project realistic.

For a mission aspiring to detect signs of life, the bar is a little higher than simply not spreading terrestrial biology to another world. The team also needs to be confident that intriguing detections at Enceladus are actually from Enceladus, not a signal of terrestrial life that came along for the ride.

A key piece of meeting that goal is keeping the spacecraft as clean as possible before launch. But no matter how careful a mission team is, some biological material will make it through.

"You can never get perfectly clean," MacKenzie said. "So doing the best that you can keep clean and then characterizing what contaminants are there makes the results more robust."

MacKenzie and the rest of the Orbilander team also built in a second way to increase their confidence in potential detections of life at Enceladus: plan for the instruments to test themselves, including, for example, with blank samples.

But those techniques are ready to go to the icy moon, she said, and the moon is ready for them. "I think it's a really exciting time to be doing life detection," MacKenzie said. "We have such a good standing on which to ask these kinds of questions at Enceladus."

via space.com

NEW YORK — Member states at the UN Security Council called for an immediate halt to fighting in Gaza between the Israel Defense Forces and the enclave’s Hamas rulers, as Israeli and Palestinian envoys presented dueling narratives regarding the ongoing violence in the region at an emergency meeting Sunday.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called on the UN body to “unequivocally” condemn Hamas for indiscriminately firing rockets at Israeli civilians, claiming its attack had been premeditated in order to improve its political standing at the Palestinian Authority’s expense.
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyadh al-Maliki, meanwhile, told member states they “embolden” Israel to keep striking in Gaza when they declare that the Jewish state has a right to defend itself. He also implored the international community to understand Palestinians will not remain silent in the face of Israeli “aggressions.”

US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr arrived in Tel Aviv on Friday and has been holding meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials aimed at reaching a ceasefire.

The US sought to have Sunday’s meeting pushed to Tuesday, but came under immense pressure from other member states to hold it earlier.

While several member states again called for the UN to issue a joint statement following the session, two diplomats involved said the effort was not particularly likely to succeed given that the meeting was public and that all comments were on the record.

Envoys for the 14 other Security Council member states, as well as guest speakers from Jordan and Egypt, also called for an immediate ceasefire, with most diplomats criticizing the Israeli strikes in Gaza that resulted in the deaths of Palestinian children as well as the flattening of an office building housed by media organizations, which the IDF said was used by Hamas. Many members also criticized Hamas rocket fire in Gaza. All of them spoke out against the Sheikh Jarrah evictions and called for a two-state solution to the conflict.

Via: timesofisrael.com/at-un-security-council-us-says-working-tirelessly-to-end-gaza-fighting/

The Israeli Occupation Forces continue its Offensives against Gaza Strip:
The Israeli Occupation Forces carried out an airstrike at a residential apartment in ‘al Saraia area at the middle of Gaza city.
3 Palestinian citizens were injured after an airstrike targeted ‘al Maghazi refugees camp, center of Gaza.
The Israeli Occupation Forces carried out an airstrike targeted the Marine site to the west of ‘al Shati’ refugees camp, West of Gaza.
Buthaina Mahmud Abaid, a 7 years old Palestinian kid, was killed by an Israeli missile fragment, that penetrated into her head, in Jabalia.
The Israeli Occupation Forces artillery bombarded a location near ‘al Nada towers and ‘Izbat bait Hanun to the north of Gaza.
The Israeli Occupation Forces targeted ‘al Kadisia site to the west of Khan Yunis with an airstrike.
One Palestinian citizens was killed and other four were injured after The Israeli Occupation Forces carried out an airstrike at a residential apartment in the middle of Gaza city.
Three Palestinian citizens were killed and other 8 were injured after The Israeli Occupation Forces carried out an airstrike at a residential apartment in ‘al Rabi’ building in ‘al Thalathini area, Gaza.
The Israeli Occupation Forces artillery bombarded Bait Hanun outskirts with smoke and stun shells.
The Israeli Occupation Forces gunboats shot fire at Gaza, Khan Yunis and Rafah shore.
The Israeli Occupation Forces targeted Hitin site to the south west of Khan Yunis with airstrikes.
The Israeli Occupation Forces carried out an airstrike at a target in ‘al Taw’am area to the north of Gaza strip.
The Israeli Occupation Forces gunboats shot fire at Bait Lahia’s agricultural lands and shore.
The Israeli Occupation Forces targeted Samih ‘al Mamluk (killed by Isreal) house in ‘al Shuja’ia.
The Israeli Occupation Forces targeted a land in Kizan Rashwan with an airstrike.
North Gaza strip districts suffer from power outage as a result of The Israeli Occupation Forces airstrikes.
The Israeli Occupation Forces targeted Bisan and Talit Klaibu by airstrikes.
Via: Romanian Embassy of Palestine

On the occasion of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates salutes all defenders of the Palestinian people’s rights to freedom and dignity, who are detained and imprisoned by the Israeli occupation.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates also calls on to the international community, including the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions and the relevant international bodies to uphold their responsibilities towards the protection of our people.
In this regard, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reminds the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions and the relevant international bodies that Israeli colonial courts have proven to be a tool of political, ethnic and politically motivated persecution of the Palestinian people, in grave breach of international humanitarian law. This military “court system” that has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including children, is an illegitimate tool of oppression that fails to meet the minimum standards of due legal process and fair trial by design. It is an integral part of the widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population, intended to destroy the Palestinian national and social fabric, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute, and human rights laws.
Today, more than 4500 Palestinians, including 140 children, 37 women, and 700 detainees suffering from critical health conditions languish in Israeli prisons and are held captive in violation of international law. International inaction and reluctance to ensure respect for Israel’s international law obligation thus far have allowed for their suffering to continue needlessly. This must end without delay.
The State of Palestine will continue to work at the legal, political and diplomatic levels to defend the just cause of Palestinian prisoners and detainees and their legitimate rights to freedom. The cause of prisoners’ freedom is an integral component of the Palestinian people’s plight to end the occupation and realize their inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination and return.

Tug boats honked their horns in celebration as the 400m-long (1,300ft) Ever Given was dislodged on Monday with the help of dredgers.
Peter Berdowski, CEO of Dutch salvage company Boskalis, said the Ever Given had been refloated at 15:05 (13:05 GMT) on Monday, "thereby making free passage through the Suez Canal possible again".
Egyptian officials say the backlog of ships waiting to transit through should be cleared in around three days, but experts believe the knock-on effect on global shipping could take weeks or even months to resolve.
How was the ship freed?
Salvage teams had faced a daunting challenge after the 200,000-tonne ship ran aground last Tuesday morning in high winds and a sandstorm which reduced visibility.
A Dutch specialist team, SMIT, oversaw a flotilla of 13 tugs, small but powerful vessels that can shift large ships, as they tried to dislodge the Ever Given.
Dredgers were brought in and dug 30,000 cubic metres of mud and sand from beneath the ends of the ship.
Over the weekend, it was feared that some of the ship's cargo of some 18,000 containers would have to be removed in order to lighten the load.
But high tides helped the tugs and dredgers in their work and early on Monday, the stern (rear of the ship) was freed and the great ship swung across the canal, to shouts of celebration. Hours later, the bow (front) too came unstuck, and the Ever Given was able to move out.
The vessel was towed to the Great Bitter Lake, which sits between two sections of the canal to the north of the salvage site, where it will undergo safety checks.
BBC via: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56567985

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