Why isolated American community is suffering huge number of babies with horrifying birth defects
Aside from Alaska 's harsh climate, the state also has to contend with a rising number of birth defects.
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The Independent
35 minutes ago
- The Independent
Unhealthy smoke from Canadian wildfires blankets the Upper Midwest when people want to be outside
Much of the Upper Midwest on Saturday was dealing with swaths of unhealthy air due to drifting smoke from Canadian wildfires, covering the northern region of the U.S. at a time when people want to be enjoying lakes, trails and the great outdoors. Most of Minnesota and parts of Montana, North Dakota and Wisconsin were ranked 'unhealthy' for air quality on a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency map. Part of North Dakota that is home to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and other tourist attractions was ranked 'very unhealthy,' some of the worst air quality in the nation. In Minnesota, 'If you have a nice pork loin you can hang from a tree, it'll turn into ham,' quipped Al Chirpich, owner of the Hideaway Resort near Detroit Lakes, where people come to enjoy tree-lined Island Lake for fishing and other water activities. Normally there would be boats and jet skis all over, but on Saturday he couldn't see a boat on the lake, where the smoke impaired visibility and curtailed his camper business. None of his 18 RV sites was occupied. His seven rental cabins drew a handful of customers. 'I suspect when the weather clears, we'll be swamped again. Fourth of July, I had probably 20 boats here lined up at my docks, and today my boat is the only one,' Chirpich said. The conditions started Friday, dragging smoke from the Canadian wildfires down to the surface, said National Weather Service Meteorologist Jennifer Ritterling, in Grand Forks. Periods of bad air quality are expected to last through the weekend in the region, she said. Limiting time outdoors, keeping windows closed and running air purifiers are good ideas for people with lung conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and even healthy people, Ritterling said. 'Our summers up here are fairly short and so everyone wants to get out and enjoy them, and it's a little frustrating when there's this smoke in the air,' she said. All of Manitoba is under a state of emergency due to the wildfires, which have led to 12,600 people evacuating their homes in the province. The fires in Manitoba have burned over 3,861 square miles (10,000 square kilometers), the most land burned in 30 years of electronic recordkeeping, the news outlet reported. Under 1,000 people have evacuated their homes in Saskatchewan, where wildfires also continue to burn. In Arizona, the North Rim in Grand Canyon National Park is still closed due to a 2.3 square-mile (6.1 square-kilometer) wildfire and another fire nearby on Bureau of Land Management land that has burned nearly 17 square miles (44 square kilometers). In Colorado, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park remains closed due to a 4.4 square mile (11.3 square kilometer) wildfire burning on the South Rim of the park, known for its dramatic, steep cliffs. Crews have been fighting the fire on multiple sides to stop it from spreading. The fires in and near both national parks led to evacuations of hundreds of people. Chirpich, the Minnesota resort owner, said he has plans to go to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park on Thursday and is 'a bit pensive about how that's going to be there.' 'I'm going to leave one smokehouse for another, I guess,' he said.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Women were killed for mining. Now the world wants their emeralds
We hurry along the long, steep, endlessly twisting mountain path that leads to the emerald mines. Yawning drops loom below us while jagged foliage forces us to duck as we race along the route to give ourselves a chance to return before nightfall. There is no safe way back in the dark. Holding my hand is Margot Rictiva, 45, one of the small but growing number of female miners, or guaqueras, who have overcome decades of prejudice and resistance to seek their fortune below ground in Coscuez, Colombia. I tell her I'm afraid of falling off one of the cliff edges. How quickly can a helicopter get down there? Surely, I would be dead before it arrives. 'You can do this,' she says. 'Have some confidence in yourself.' Generations of miners have made this 90-minute hike before us, most of them setting out well before sunrise, hoping to avoid the mid-morning heat that engulfs the forest. But Rictiva and I have started the journey late, and alone. All we can hear is the sound of crickets, birds and our own heavy breathing in the hot, damp air. Finally we arrive at the entrance to a small mine, one of several scattered along a towering mountain face. Its rocky arch blends in with the vegetation and as we enter, darkness envelops us. Inside Rictiva tells me why she puts herself through this grinding routine day after day. 'I'm going to find a huge emerald one day,' she says. 'I'm going to buy a house for my mum and I'm going to go on holiday for the first time in my life.' The jewels Rictiva is seeking are renowned around the globe for their quality, intense colour and purity. Although discovered by the area's indigenous people, Colombia's emeralds were not traded internationally until after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Today, Muzo, a town just over six miles from Coscuez, is considered the world's emerald capital. Last year the Colombian government estimated that the mines in Coscuez have 60 million carats left to extract. The country exports gems worth an average of $140 million every year — at least half of the world's emeralds by value — yet more than 15 per cent of people in what is known as Colombia's 'green heart' live in poverty. Nelda Villamil, the president of a female miners guild and a former guaquera, said there were more female miners than ever in the region, especially in Muzo. 'Our guaqueras help each other. They're brave, they're leaders. They learn fast and they adapt. They lead our economy,' she said. Women, she added, were at the forefront of efforts demanding better, safer working conditions for traditional miners, although they were distrustful of government officials who had failed to look after their interests in the past. For decades women have fought to establish themselves in the mines. It was once believed that their beauty would drive away the emeralds, so they were not allowed in the mines at all. Between the 1960s and 1980s, a period known as the 'green wars', when thousands of miners were killed as emerald bosses backed by criminal organisations vied for the land, women who tried to work in the mines were threatened and sometimes raped. Villamil said one of her sisters was killed by her husband, an emerald miner, as a result of the violence and culture of machismo, lingering from the decades of conflict where women were seen as commodities. 'Our history has been very tragic. My sister was targeted because she was beautiful. So many of our women were hurt, raped, killed,' she told me earlier, on the bumpy six-hour drive from the capital, Bogotá. 'But I don't want to talk about it. It's an ugly past.' In 1990 the government and the church helped broker a peace deal that quelled the violence in the region and the arrival of multinationals in the late 2000s improved the outlook for some women in the industry. Fura Gems, a Dubai-based company with an outpost in Coscuez, spearheaded the creation of the region's first all-women wash plant. Emerald Mining Services (EMS), a multinational company in Muzo, claims to be a 'pioneer in the formal and legal inclusion of women' in mining. • Why gemstones are a sparkling investment choice Today there are a few hundred women miners working in the Coscuez and Muzo area in both the formal and unregulated sectors. Overall, female miners make up 13 per cent of the country's total mining workforce, according to the Colombian Mining Association. But while the multinational companies brought change for the better by offering safer working conditions they also cut access to many unregulated mining tunnels on their land that people had until then depended on for survival. There are only so many jobs the companies can offer — fewer than 2,000. The combined population of Coscuez, Muzo, and other neighbouring towns that rely almost exclusively on mining is around 16,000. That drives thousands into the remaining unregulated mines with their primitively designed shafts and greater safety risks. Now the government is trying to sell the land that they are on too. A designated police squad targets 'illegal' mining and seizes traditional miners' equipment. Guaqueras say they have historic rights to these lands and deny that their work is illegal. 'The work is extremely arduous, many people have died doing it but this is the only labour we know. It's ancestral,' said Maria del Pilar Ruge, a miner who moonlights as a hairstylist to help support her husband, who is having cancer treatment. 'We have earned the right to work this land, to harvest its wealth.' Rictiva is only about 5ft 4in but in the passageway of this unregulated mine she seems taller. She can stand straight, while I have to crawl, at 5ft 11in, dirtying my jeans in the groundwater. Her chiseled face is illuminated by the beam of light coming from my construction helmet and tiny dots of perspiration and flecks of coal glisten on her tanned skin. She hammers the ceiling with surprising strength. Nearby, a cherub-faced 16-year-old girl plays hide and seek. She's too young to take on the gruelling labour, instead darting into the corners of rocky walls as the adults load dirt on minecarts to take outside and search for jewels. It's at least 45C and the air is thick and humid. Gusts of fresh air through a cooling hose provides temporary relief before a small explosion erupts to our left. Rictiva peeks inside a pit tunnel, unfazed. 'It's been too long since it was ventilated, the toxic gases might make you pass out,' she says. It's not safe to give me a tour. In 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available, 52 miners died in the state of Boyacá, which includes this region, the highest number nationwide. • Photos may prove the 'richest wreck in history has been found off Colombia A day later, I make the trip to an open pit in Muzo with Claudia Rojas, a mother of four who knows the mines by heart. She says that it's the women who struggle the hardest. 'Not to undermine men — obviously they work really hard — but they rely on what they make day-to-day, which is not a lot, for survival,' Rojas said. 'We know it's on us if we're not able to feed our families. So, we are at the mines, we work odd jobs selling lottery tickets, food, doing nails, people's hair, and then we have to come home and do chores. We have to find a way to be everywhere and be everything. Men in Coscuez can be very sexist, but we refuse to let them walk over us.' Roja's routine is brutal; she wakes at dawn and pays 24,000 Colombian pesos ($6) for a round trip to and from the mine by motorcycle. She sometimes skips lunch and often goes months without finding any emeralds worth selling. 'We try to help each other among women,' said Martha Fernandez Campos Lara, a guaquera since 1986. 'When we are up there in the mines and one of us doesn't have money for lunch, we share a piece of chicken, a coffee.' At the edge of the pit, Mariela Medina runs water from a hose to search for speckles of precious green in the earth discarded by the big companies. As agreed with the local government, under a new system called la voladora (the flyer), the companies allow local people to have the dirt that their own employees have discarded. But by the time it reaches informal miners, the odds of finding a decent-sized gem are extremely low. Women have their own designated day to search these dumps without men. 'We're fighting like animals for it, people push and hit each other — it's degrading,' said Medina, her imitation emerald earrings twinkling. 'We just pray to God that by some crazy miracle, we are able to find something, anything.' She added: 'Many years ago, traditional mining was a beautiful way to make a living, but the companies have cut access to a lot of the mines. People leave town because they're forced to find a way to make a living somewhere else.' As the sun sets, the women wave goodbye from a corner of Muzo. They smile warmly but they will only have a few hours of rest before resuming the hunt for a life-changing lump of green tomorrow. They look small and vulnerable as we drive away.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Texas Hill Country under flood watch as search continues for missing people
Texas Hill Country was back under flood watch on Saturday, with the National Weather Service warning of 'locally heavy rainfall' of 1-3in with isolated amounts near 6in possible. The flood watch, which continues through Sunday evening, comes as the death toll from the 4 July flood continues to rise – now at nearly 130 people - and authorities continue their search for the 160 more who are missing. The latest warnings anticipate considerably less rain than what came down last week, which caused the Guadalupe River to rise 29ft in 45 minutes. The Texas division of emergency management, or TDEM, had mobilized before the storm, but their assets were not focused exclusively on Texas Hill Country. The storm alerts that were issued before and during the storm, in an area of patchy cell service, are now the subject of scrutiny. On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic's buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous floodplain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors. Fema had included the prestigious girls' summer camp in a 'special flood hazard area' on its national flood insurance map for Kerr county in 2011, which meant it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects. That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood – one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year. The 4 July flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by Fema, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off-guard in a county that lacked a warning system. Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied Fema's flood map determinations, said it was 'particularly disturbing' that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation. 'It's a mystery to me why they weren't taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone,' she said. Pralle told the AP that some of the exempted properties were within 2ft (0.6 meters) of Fema's floodplain by the camp's revised calculations, which she said left almost no margin for error. She said her research shows that Fema approves about 90% of map amendment requests, and the process may favor the wealthy and well-connected. Experts say Camp Mystic's requests to amend the Fema map could have been an attempt to avoid the requirement to carry flood insurance, lower the camp's insurance premiums or pave the way for renovating or adding new structures under less costly regulations. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion In a statement, Fema downplayed the significance of the flood map amendments to the AP: 'Flood maps are snapshots in time designed to show minimum standards for floodplain management and the highest risk areas for flood insurance. They are not predictions of where it will flood, and they don't show where it has flooded before.' While Texas officials and Donald Trump have been resistant to questions about any failures to forewarn of the impending flood – questions that have largely been put to one side as local and state recovery teams, along with thousands of volunteers, work in and alongside the river to find the missing – the Washington Post reported that Kerr county had the technology to turn every cellphone in the river valley into a loud alarm. But the mass notification system, known as the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or Ipaws, was not activated and emergency managers in the county relied on a series of text messages for alerts. Trump visited the area on Friday, telling first responders that he and Melania Trump, the first lady, were there to 'express the love and support and anguish of our entire nation'. 'So all across the country, Americans' hearts are shattered,' he said. 'We're filled with grief and devastation. It's the loss of life and, unfortunately, they're still looking.' Trump said two things had struck him: the 'unity' of Texans and the 'competence' of those responding to the disaster. 'Everyone has just pulled together, it's rare that you see this,' he said.
