TOKYO — Japan’s beloved former Empress Michiko received greetings from her relatives and palace officials to celebrate her 90th birthday Sunday as she steadily recovers from a broken leg, officials said.
Michiko is the first commoner to become empress in modern Japanese history. Catholic-educated Michiko Shoda and then-Crown Prince Akihito married on April 10, 1959, after what is known as their tennis court romance.
Since then, Akihito and Michiko have largely withdrawn from public appearance to enjoy their quiet life together, taking daily walks inside the palace gardens or occasionally taking private trips, hosting small gatherings for book reading and music, according to the Imperial Household Agency.
Former Emperor Akihito has been concerned about Michiko’s physical strength and asking how she is feeling, officials said.
Michiko, who fell earlier in October at her residence and had a surgery for her femoral fracture, was steadily recovering with a daily rehabilitation session for about an hour at a time, palace officials said. She was expected to be in a wheelchair when joining her well-wishers for Sunday’s celebration.
The former empress was deeply concerned about the people affected by the deadly Jan. 1 earthquake in Japan’s north-central region of Noto, especially those who suffered additional damage from September’s heavy rains and floods, the palace said.
Since retirement, Michiko has shared her love of literature, including children’s books, English poetry and music, with her friends as well as with Akihito.
The palace said she reads parts of a book aloud with her husband as a daily routine after breakfast. They are currently reading a book chosen by Akihito about war and Okinawa, a southern Japanese island where one of the harshest ground battles took place at the end of World War II fought in the name of his father.
The couple broke with traditions and brought many changes to the monarchy: They chose to raise their three children themselves, spoke more often to the public, and made amends for war victims in and outside Japan. Their close interactions have won them deep affection among Japanese.
AROMAS, Calif. — An earthquake registering magnitude 4.2 shook part of central California early Sunday, the United States Geological Survey reported.
The earthquake was detected at 2:47 a.m. local time about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) northwest of Aromas with a depth of 7.4 kilometers (4.59 miles), the science agency said on its website and in a social media post.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or major property damage, according to local media.
Aromas is about 94 miles (151 kilometers) south of San Francisco.
TOKYO — Small tsunami waves splashed ashore on remote Japanese islands Tuesday morning after an earthquake that may have been triggered by volcanic activity.
The offshore quake was not felt, and the tsunami advisory was lifted about three hours later. No damage or injuries were reported.
The Japan Meteorological Agency had advised that waves up to 1 meter (yard) above tide levels could occur on the coasts of the Izu and Ogasawara island chains after the magnitude 5.8 quake occurred off the Izu Islands. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake’s strength at 5.6 magnitude.
About 21,500 people live on the islands in the Izu group and about 2,500 on the Ogasawara Islands.
JMA said a tsunami of about 50 centimeters (about 20 inches) was detected in the Yaene district on Hachijo Island about 30 minutes after the quake. Smaller waves were detected on three other islands — Kozushima, Miyakejima and Izu Oshima.
The offshore quake occurred about 180 kilometers (111 miles) south of Hachijo island, which is about 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Tokyo.
Television footage showed waves splashing against a wharf on Hachijo island but no major swelling was seen.
Residents on Hachijo said they did not feel the quake and only heard the tsunami advisory, Japan’s NHK public television said.
Ryuji Minemoto, a Hachijo resident, told NHK that he was on high ground overlooking the ocean but didn’t notice changes in the water. “I can see some ships but they don’t seem to be moving violently,” he said. Minemoto said he did not feel the earlier quake.
Fumihiko Imamura, a Tohoku University seismologist, said the tsunami is believed to be related to undersea volcanic activity that might have caused a rise or sinking of parts of the seabed. Imamura told NHK that such movement, unlike ordinary quakes, may not have caused rattling.
Japan sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean, and is one of the world’s most earthquake and tsunami-prone countries.
An extendable robot on Tuesday resumed its entry into one of three damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to retrieve a fragment of melted fuel debris, nearly three weeks after its earlier attempt was suspended due to a technical issue.
The collection of a tiny sample of the spent fuel debris from inside of the Unit 2 reactor marks the start of the most challenging part of the decadeslong decommissioning of the plant where three reactors were destroyed in the March 11, 2011, magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami disaster.
The sample-return mission, initially scheduled to begin on Aug. 22, was suspended when workers noticed that a set of five 1.5-meter (5-foot) add-on pipes to push in and maneuver the robot were in the wrong order and could not be corrected within the time limit for their radiation exposure, the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said.
The pipes were to be used to push the robot inside and pull it back out when it finished. Once inside the vessel, the robot is operated remotely from a safer location.
The robot, nicknamed “telesco,” can extend up to about 22 meters (72 feet), including the pipes pushing it from behind, to reach its target area to collect a fragment from the surface of the melted fuel mound using a device equipped with tongs that hang from the of the robot.
The mission to obtain the fragment and return with it is to last about two weeks.
The mix-up, which TEPCO called a “basic mistake,” triggered disappointment and raised concerns from officials and local residents. Industry Minister Ken Saito ordered TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa a thorough investigation of the cause and preventive steps before resuming the mission.
The pipes were brought into the Unit 2 reactor building and pre-arranged at the end of July by workers from the robot’s prime contractor and its subsidiary, but their final status was never checked until the problem was found.
TEPCO concluded the mishap was caused by a lack of attention, checking and communication between the operator and workers on the ground. By Monday, the equipment was reassembled in the right order and ready for a retrial, the company said.
The goal of the operation is to bring back less than 3 grams (0.1 ounce) of an estimated 880 tons of fatally radioactive molten fuel that remain in three reactors. The small sample will provide key data to develop future decommissioning methods and necessary technology and robots, experts say.
The government and TEPCO are sticking to a 30 to 40-year cleanup target set soon after the meltdown, despite criticism it is unrealistic. No specific plans for the full removal of the melted fuel debris or its storage have been decided.
NEW YORK (AP) — A mural honoring ancient and modern figures in medicine that has hung in the lobby of Pfizer’s original New York City headquarters for more than 60 years could soon end up in pieces if conservationists can’t find a new home for it in the next few weeks.
“Medical Research Through the Ages,” a massive metal and tile mosaic depicting scientists and lab equipment, has been visible through the high glass-windowed lobby of the pharmaceutical giant’s midtown Manhattan office since the 1960s.
But the building is being gutted and converted into residential apartments, and the new owners have given the mural a move-out date of as soon as Sept. 10.
Art conservationists and the late artist’s daughters are now scrambling to find a patron who is able to cover the tens of thousands of dollars they estimate it will take to move and remount it, as well as an institution that can display it.
“I would ideally like to see it as part of an educational future, whether it’s on a hospital campus as part of a school or a college. Or part of a larger public art program for the citizens of New York City,” said art historian and urban planner Andrew Cronson, one of the people trying to find a new home for the piece.
The 40-foot-wide and 18-foot-high (12 meters by 5.5 meters) mural by Greek American artist Nikos Bel-Jon was the main showpiece of Pfizer’s world headquarters when the building opened a few blocks from Grand Central Terminal in 1961, at a time when flashy buildings and grand corporate art projects were a symbol of business success. He died in 1966, leaving behind dozens of large brushed-metal works commissioned by companies and private institutions, many of which have now been lost or destroyed.
In recent years, Pfizer sold the building — and last year moved its headquarters to a shared office space in a newer property. The company said in an emailed statement that it decided the money needed to deconstruct, relocate and reinstall the mural elsewhere would be better spent on “patient-related priorities.”
The developer now turning the building into apartments, Metro Loft, doesn’t want to keep the artwork either, though it has been working with those trying to save the piece with help like letting art appraisers in. The company declined to comment further, but Jack Berman, its director of operations, confirmed in an email that it needs to get the mural out.
Bel-Jon’s youngest daughter, Rhea Bel-Jon Calkins, said they’ve gotten some interest from universities who could take the piece, and a Greek cultural organization that could help fundraise for the move. But the removal alone could cost between $20,00 and $50,000, according to estimates cited by Cronson.
If they can’t immediately find a taker, the mural won’t end up in landfill, Bel-Jon Calkins said. But it would have to be broken up into pieces — nine metal sections and eight mosaic sections — and moved into storage, likely with some of her relatives.
Time is ticking away. Workers gutting the building have been carrying out ripped-up carpeting, drab office chairs and piles of scrap wood and loading them into garbage trucks.
For the past few decades, the artwork’s metal — brushed tin and aluminum panels in the shape of laboratory beakers, funnels and flasks, surrounded by symbols, alchemists and scientists — has been a dull gray and white. But Bel-Jon Calkins remembers its original, multicolored lighting scheme.
“As you moved, the color moved with you and changed. So there was a constant dynamic to the mural that no one really has ever been able to achieve,” she said.
Richard McCoy, director of the Indiana nonprofit Landmark Columbus Foundation, which cares for local buildings and landscapes, said the piece might lack commercial value, describing Bel-Jon as “extraordinary, but not super well-known.”
“But then you realize 20 or 30 years from then how great it was,” he said, adding that it might merit preservation for its historical value.
Bel-Jon Calkins tracks her father’s 42 large-scale metal murals in a spreadsheet and on the artist’s website. She said only about a dozen are confirmed to exist.
A 12-foot (3.6-meter) metal mosaic depicting saints and commissioned by a Greek Orthodox church in San Francisco was destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. General Motors commissioned a hubcap-shaped metal mural that was larger than a car for a trade show, but she confirmed it was later melted down into scrap.
“It’s the corporations that have lost them,” she said in a phone conversation from her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “They valued them enough to commission them but not enough to preserve them.”
NEW YORK — A mural honoring ancient and modern figures in medicine that has hung in the lobby of Pfizer’s original New York City headquarters for more than 60 years could soon end up in pieces if conservationists can’t find a new home for it in the next few weeks.
“Medical Research Through the Ages,” a massive metal and tile mosaic depicting scientists and lab equipment, has been visible through the high glass-windowed lobby of the pharmaceutical giant’s midtown Manhattan office since the 1960s.
But the building is being gutted and converted into residential apartments, and the new owners have given the mural a move-out date of as soon as Sept. 10.
Art conservationists and the late artist’s daughters are now scrambling to find a patron who is able to cover the tens of thousands of dollars they estimate it will take to move and remount it, as well as an institution that can display it.
“I would ideally like to see it as part of an educational future, whether it’s on a hospital campus as part of a school or a college. Or part of a larger public art program for the citizens of New York City,” said art historian and urban planner Andrew Cronson, one of the people trying to find a new home for the piece.
The 40-foot-wide and 18-foot-high (12 meters by 5.5 meters) mural by Greek American artist Nikos Bel-Jon was the main showpiece of Pfizer’s world headquarters when the building opened a few blocks from Grand Central Terminal in 1961, at a time when flashy buildings and grand corporate art projects were a symbol of business success. He died in 1966, leaving behind dozens of large brushed-metal works commissioned by companies and private institutions, many of which have now been lost or destroyed.
In recent years, Pfizer sold the building — and last year moved its headquarters to a shared office space in a newer property. The company said in an emailed statement that it decided the money needed to deconstruct, relocate and reinstall the mural elsewhere would be better spent on “patient-related priorities.”
The developer now turning the building into apartments, Metro Loft, doesn’t want to keep the artwork either, though it has been working with those trying to save the piece with help like letting art appraisers in. The company declined to comment further, but Jack Berman, its director of operations, confirmed in an email that it needs to get the mural out.
Bel-Jon’s youngest daughter, Rhea Bel-Jon Calkins, said they’ve gotten some interest from universities who could take the piece, and a Greek cultural organization that could help fundraise for the move. But the removal alone could cost between $20,00 and $50,000, according to estimates cited by Cronson.
If they can’t immediately find a taker, the mural won’t end up in landfill, Bel-Jon Calkins said. But it would have to be broken up into pieces — nine metal sections and eight mosaic sections — and moved into storage, likely with some of her relatives.
Time is ticking away. Workers gutting the building have been carrying out ripped-up carpeting, drab office chairs and piles of scrap wood and loading them into garbage trucks.
For the past few decades, the artwork’s metal — brushed tin and aluminum panels in the shape of laboratory beakers, funnels and flasks, surrounded by symbols, alchemists and scientists — has been a dull gray and white. But Bel-Jon Calkins remembers its original, multicolored lighting scheme.
“As you moved, the color moved with you and changed. So there was a constant dynamic to the mural that no one really has ever been able to achieve,” she said.
Richard McCoy, director of the Indiana nonprofit Landmark Columbus Foundation, which cares for local buildings and landscapes, said the piece might lack commercial value, describing Bel-Jon as “extraordinary, but not super well-known.”
“But then you realize 20 or 30 years from then how great it was,” he said, adding that it might merit preservation for its historical value.
Bel-Jon Calkins tracks her father’s 42 large-scale metal murals in a spreadsheet and on the artist’s website. She said only about a dozen are confirmed to exist.
A 12-foot (3.6-meter) metal mosaic depicting saints and commissioned by a Greek Orthodox church in San Francisco was destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. General Motors commissioned a hubcap-shaped metal mural that was larger than a car for a trade show, but she confirmed it was later melted down into scrap.
“It’s the corporations that have lost them,” she said in a phone conversation from her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “They valued them enough to commission them but not enough to preserve them.”
NEW YORK — A mural honoring ancient and modern figures in medicine that has hung in the lobby of Pfizer’s original New York City headquarters for more than 60 years could soon end up in pieces if conservationists can’t find a new home for it in the next few weeks.
“Medical Research Through the Ages,” a massive metal and tile mosaic depicting scientists and lab equipment, has been visible through the high glass-windowed lobby of the pharmaceutical giant’s midtown Manhattan office since the 1960s.
But the building is being gutted and converted into residential apartments, and the new owners have given the mural a move-out date of as soon as Sept. 10.
Art conservationists and the late artist’s daughters are now scrambling to find a patron who is able to cover the tens of thousands of dollars they estimate it will take to move and remount it, as well as an institution that can display it.
“I would ideally like to see it as part of an educational future, whether it’s on a hospital campus as part of a school or a college. Or part of a larger public art program for the citizens of New York City,” said art historian and urban planner Andrew Cronson, one of the people trying to find a new home for the piece.
The 40-foot-wide and 18-foot-high (12 meters by 5.5 meters) mural by Greek American artist Nikos Bel-Jon was the main showpiece of Pfizer’s world headquarters when the building opened a few blocks from Grand Central Terminal in 1961, at a time when flashy buildings and grand corporate art projects were a symbol of business success. He died in 1966, leaving behind dozens of large brushed-metal works commissioned by companies and private institutions, many of which have now been lost or destroyed.
In recent years, Pfizer sold the building — and last year moved its headquarters to a shared office space in a newer property. The company said in an emailed statement that it decided the money needed to deconstruct, relocate and reinstall the mural elsewhere would be better spent on “patient-related priorities.”
The developer now turning the building into apartments, Metro Loft, doesn’t want to keep the artwork either, though it has been working with those trying to save the piece with help like letting art appraisers in. The company declined to comment further, but Jack Berman, its director of operations, confirmed in an email that it needs to get the mural out.
Bel-Jon’s youngest daughter, Rhea Bel-Jon Calkins, said they’ve gotten some interest from universities who could take the piece, and a Greek cultural organization that could help fundraise for the move. But the removal alone could cost between $20,00 and $50,000, according to estimates cited by Cronson.
If they can’t immediately find a taker, the mural won’t end up in landfill, Bel-Jon Calkins said. But it would have to be broken up into pieces — nine metal sections and eight mosaic sections — and moved into storage, likely with some of her relatives.
Time is ticking away. Workers gutting the building have been carrying out ripped-up carpeting, drab office chairs and piles of scrap wood and loading them into garbage trucks.
For the past few decades, the artwork’s metal — brushed tin and aluminum panels in the shape of laboratory beakers, funnels and flasks, surrounded by symbols, alchemists and scientists — has been a dull gray and white. But Bel-Jon Calkins remembers its original, multicolored lighting scheme.
“As you moved, the color moved with you and changed. So there was a constant dynamic to the mural that no one really has ever been able to achieve,” she said.
Richard McCoy, director of the Indiana nonprofit Landmark Columbus Foundation, which cares for local buildings and landscapes, said the piece might lack commercial value, describing Bel-Jon as “extraordinary, but not super well-known.”
“But then you realize 20 or 30 years from then how great it was,” he said, adding that it might merit preservation for its historical value.
Bel-Jon Calkins tracks her father’s 42 large-scale metal murals in a spreadsheet and on the artist’s website. She said only about a dozen are confirmed to exist.
A 12-foot (3.6-meter) metal mosaic depicting saints and commissioned by a Greek Orthodox church in San Francisco was destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. General Motors commissioned a hubcap-shaped metal mural that was larger than a car for a trade show, but she confirmed it was later melted down into scrap.
“It’s the corporations that have lost them,” she said in a phone conversation from her home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “They valued them enough to commission them but not enough to preserve them.”
TOKYO — An attempt to use an extendable robot to remove a fragment of melted fuel from a wrecked reactor at Japan’s tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was suspended Thursday due to a technical issue.
The collection of a tiny sample of the debris inside the Unit 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel would start the fuel debris removal phase, the most challenging part of the decadeslong decommissioning of the plant where three reactors were destroyed in the March 11, 2011, magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami disaster.
The work was stopped when workers noticed that five 1.5-meter (5-foot) pipes used to maneuver the robot were placed in the wrong order and could not be corrected within the time limit for their radiation exposure, the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said.
The pipes were to be used to push the robot inside and pull it back out when it finished. Once inside the vessel, the robot is operated remotely from a safer location.
The robot can extend up to about 22 meters (72 feet) to reach its target area to collect a fragment from the surface of the melted fuel mound using a device equipped with tongs that hang from the tip of the robot.
The mission to obtain the fragment and return with it is to last two weeks. TEPCO said a new start date is undecided.
TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa said the priority was safety rather than rushing the process and that he planned to investigate the cause of the pipe setup problem.
“I understand that the decision was to stop and not push when there was a concern,” Kobayakawa told reporters in the north-cenral prefecture of Niigata, where he visited to discuss another TEPCO-operated nuclear power plant with the local community.
The sample-return mission is a first crucial step of a decades-long decommissioning at the Fukushima Daiichi. But its goal to bring back less than 3 grams (0.1 ounce) of an estimated 880 tons of fatally radioactive molten fuel underscores the daunting challenges.
Despite the small amount of the debris sample, it will provide key data to develop future decommissioning methods and necessary technology and robots, experts say.
Better understanding of the melted fuel debris is key to decommissioning the three wrecked reactors and the entire plant.
The government and TEPCO are sticking to a 30-40-year cleanup target set soon after the meltdown, despite criticism it is unrealistic. No specific plans for the full removal of the melted fuel debris or its storage have been decided.
PETROPAVOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia — One of Russia’s most active volcanoes has erupted, spewing plumes of ash 5 kilometers (3 miles) into the sky over the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula and briefly triggering a “code red” warning for aircraft.
The Shiveluch volcano began sputtering shortly after a powerful 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck off Kamchatka’s east coast early Sunday, according to volcanologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences. They warned that another, even more potent earthquake may be on the way.
The academy’s Institute of Volcanology and Seismology released a video showing the ash cloud over Shiveluch. It stretched over 490 kilometers (304 miles) east and southeast of the volcano.
The Ebeko volcano located on the Kuril Islands also spewed ash 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) high, the institute said. It did not explicitly say whether the earthquake touched off the eruptions.
A “code red” ash cloud warning briefly put all aircraft in the area on alert, the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team reported. A separate report on Sunday carried by the official Tass news agency said that no commercial flights had been disrupted and there was no damage to aviation infrastructure.
The tremors in the area may be a prelude to an even stronger earthquake in southeastern Kamchatka, Russian scientists warned. The Institute of Volcanology said a potential second quake could come “within 24 hours” with a magnitude approaching 9.0.
There were no immediate reports of injuries from Sunday’s earthquake, which struck at a depth of 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) under the sea bed with the epicenter 108 kilometers (67 miles) southeast of the nearest city, according to Russian emergency officials.
Russian news outlets cited residents of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a port city of more than 181,000 people that sits across a bay from an important Russian submarine base, reporting some of the strongest shaking “in a long time.”
On Nov. 4, 1952, a magnitude 9.0 quake in Kamchatka caused damage but no reported deaths despite setting off 9.1-meter (30-foot) waves in Hawaii.
PETROPAVOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia — A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 struck in the Pacific off the far eastern coast of Russia near a major naval base early Sunday, but there were no early reports of damage or injuries.
The quake prompted a tsunami warning that was later lifted.
The earthquake occurred 18 miles (29 kilometers) below the surface and its epicenter was about 63 miles (102 kilometers) east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is a port city of more than 181,000 people surrounded by volcanoes and sits across a bay from an important Russian submarine base.
The U.S. National Weather Service’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu initially warned that hazardous tsunami waves were possible for coasts within 300 miles (480 kilometers) of the earthquake epicenter, but later announced the threat had ended.
The center said minor sea level fluctuations could occur in some coastal areas near the earthquake site for several hours.
SALT LAKE CITY — A common line of questions has emerged from visitors to Utah’s Arches National Park in the week since an iconic rock arch at Lake Powell known as the “Toilet Bowl” collapsed.
Are these arches also at risk of falling soon? What are you doing to prevent their collapse?
The answers: They might be, and nothing, said Karen Garthwait, spokesperson for Arches and Canyonlands national parks.
“Our mission is not to freeze time and preserve these structures exactly as they are,” she said. “Our mission is to preserve the natural processes that create these structures, which of course, is the same process that will eventually undo them as well.”
When the geological formation formally named “Double Arch” crumbled last Thursday at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, it served as a sad reminder to many that arches are not guaranteed to stand forever. All arches have a lifespan, which scientists are trying to avoid shortening — or extending.
Experts say human activity has sped up erosion within the last hundred years, making arches susceptible to crumbing at any given time. But when exactly they might fall can be tough to predict.
The outward appearance of an arch gives little indication of its stability. Those that appear most sturdy can have internal cracks, while others that appear to defy gravity may better withstand the elements.
Southern Utah’s sandstone bedrock is strong enough to support the weight of large arches — one of the sturdiest shapes found in nature — but soft enough to be sculpted over time by wind, water and gravity, according to the Utah Geological Survey. The region’s semi-arid climate also plays an important role in forming and sustaining the sandstone wonders.
While the National Park Service is not physically fortifying arches — it abandoned a plan to coat one in plastic in the 1940s — it has enacted strict policies to limit human impact on the natural structures.
As recently as two decades ago, parkgoers could be seen walking on top of some arches and hanging on them for photos. A climber even scaled Delicate Arch, the most widely recognized of Utah’s more than 6,000 arches, leaving rope grooves in the sandstone that Garthwait said can still be seen today. The ascent led park officials to reword regulations in 2006 to make clear that climbing arches is prohibited.
At Lake Powell, a large reservoir on the border of Utah and Arizona, families frequently climbed the now-fallen arch and plunged into a swimming hole below. Park rangers and geologists suspect a combination of regular foot traffic and changing water levels contributed to the arch’s demise. The reservoir’s water levels have been declining due to drought and climate change since 2001, according to the National Park Service.
“Some people have the sense that rock is strong and humans don’t affect it,” said Jeff Moore, a geology and geophysics professor at the University of Utah. “When these kinds of collapse happen, it’s a reminder that arches are really fragile. Subtle changes can make a difference.”
Moore has led research projects that measure the seismic activity beneath Utah’s arches and use civil engineering principles to assess their structural health. The rock formations are constantly vibrating, he said, and human-made energy sources such as trains, trucks and helicopters are increasing those vibrations, placing stress on the arches and accelerating crack growth.
The Federal Aviation Administration imposed air restrictions last year for helicopters flying near Utah’s Rainbow Bridge National Monument — one of the world’s largest known natural bridges — to avoid vibration-induced damage in light of Moore’s research.
Humans have dramatically changed the vibration landscape within the last century, he said, and more arches could soon fall as a result.
“This is a really rapid change in the lifespan of an arch,” Moore said. “Geology moves slowly. Humans have arrived quickly and, in some places, are making dramatic changes in the environment.”
A U.S. Bureau of Reclamation facility in western Colorado that removes salt water from the Colorado River system and injects it deep into the ground has also been linked to earthquakes near Utah national parks. The site was temporarily closed after a 4.5 magnitude earthquake was recorded there in 2019 but has since resumed operations at a reduced rate.
For Richard Beckman, president of the Natural Arch and Bridge Society, knowing that some of the world’s most iconic arches might fall in his lifetime adds a sense of urgency to visit them before they’re gone.
“It’s like losing an old friend,” Beckman said. “I’m sad to see them go, but I’m hurt more by the arches that collapsed that I never saw in person. We don’t know how long they’re going to last, so you have to go appreciate them.”
LOS ANGELES — A 4.4 magnitude earthquake was strongly felt Monday afternoon from the Los Angeles area all the way to San Diego, swaying buildings, rattling dishes and setting off car alarms, but no major damage or injuries were immediately reported.
The temblor caused a pipe to burst at the ornate 1927 Pasadena City Hall building, where TV news helicopters showed water spilling from an upper floor. Elsewhere in the Los Angeles area, an ESPN interview was interrupted, and the ground swayed in Anaheim, where Disneyland is located in Orange County.
Dishes rattled in the storied Los Angeles neighborhood of Laurel Canyon, home to many celebrities, and photos on social media showed shampoo bottles and other items littering the floor of a Target store in LA.
The quake was centered near the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park, about 6.5 miles northeast of LA’s City Hall, and about 7.5 miles below the surface, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The quake was felt from greater Los Angeles south to San Diego and east to the Palm Springs desert region, according to the USGS community reporting page. A small number of reports were filed from the southern San Joaquin Valley about 100 miles northwest of LA.
Pasadena public information officer Lisa Derderian confirmed that the water leak at City Hall was caused by the quake. About 200 employees safely evacuated from City Hall, and one person was rescued from an elevator, she said.
There was no obvious damage to Pasadena’s century-old Rose Bowl, but an engineer will do a full assessment, Derderian said. There was no immediate assessment of the city’s 1927 Central Library, which was closed in 2021 for a pending seismic retrofit. “We have not gone inside there to look at it,” she said.
Los Angeles firefighters from all 106 stations surveyed the 470-square-mile city and found no significant damage, spokesperson Margaret Stewart said in a statement.
The quake served more as a reminder of what could happen in a state where a huge population lives above active fault lines.
“Having lived through the Northridge earthquake (magnitude 6.7 in 1994), today’s tremor made me flash back to what we know are lifesaving rules during an earthquake: drop, cover, and hold on,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. “It was also a reminder to us all that we live in earthquake country and we need to be prepared.”
The National Weather Service said a tsunami was not expected, and the USGS downgraded its initial estimate of 4.6 for the quake’s magnitude.
Richard Egan was eating lunch with colleagues on the second floor of an office building near the Long Beach Airport, about 20 miles south of the quake’s epicenter, when there was a sudden jolt.
“It got really quiet,” he said, “and we waited for a bigger quake to follow.”
There was rolling for about 45 seconds, he estimated, but with no more shaking, the lunchtime conversation resumed where it left off, said Egan, who has lived through many quakes during his 59 years in Southern California. He rated this one as average.
The quake struck on the first day of the new school year for 540,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Many schools felt the quake, and at least one high school, John Marshall in Los Feliz, alerted parents that they had evacuated the buildings to check for damage but didn’t see any immediately.
“We have not received reports of any injuries or significant damage to our facilities,” district Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said in a social media post.
The quake comes less than a week after a 5.2 magnitude temblor hit southern California and was also widely felt in Los Angeles. That quake caused no injuries or major damage.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
KANAIO, Hawaii (AP) — Fear. Anxiety. Anger. Depression. Overwhelmed.
Janice Dapitan began her second counseling session by writing those words on a whiteboard, reflecting what she felt in that moment. The day fire destroyed her hometown of Lahaina — and the struggles that have followed for nearly a year — still haunted her.
The fire killed her uncle. It burned the homes of seven family members. Her daughter narrowly escaped the blaze with her two children, but lost her house and moved to Las Vegas. The house Dapitan shares with her husband, Kalani, survived, but now it overlooks the burn zone. The view is a painful, constant reminder that the life they’d known is gone.
“There are so many triggers,” she said on a blustery July day. Her long black braids fell over a tank top with the word “Lahaina” printed in gold. “We can be okay today, and tomorrow it could be different. Everything is uncertain. Every day is a different challenge. We want to stay joyful, but it’s a process.”
Janice Dapitan, left, cries during an interview with husband Kalani, right, following an equine therapy session at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
One year after the Maui fires, thousands of residents share Dapitan’s struggle. They grieve the losses of loved ones and generational homes. They are haunted by their traumatic escapes and even by the guilt of surviving. They’ve endured months of instability — switching hotel rooms, schools and jobs. An estimated 1,500 families have left Maui, forced to start over thousands of miles from home.
But lately, Dapitan has enjoyed some relief, thanks to an equine-assisted therapy program at the Spirit Horse Ranch in Maui’s rural upcountry, an hour’s drive from Lahaina.
“The connection with the horses is different than connecting with machines or humans,” said Dapitan. “It’s almost like instant healing.”
After large-scale disasters, restoring a community’s mental wellness is as important as rebuilding infrastructure, experts say. And just as constructing an entire town can take years, so can healing its residents.
“We can be so focused on the bricks-and-mortar rebuild — because that’s challenging enough as it is — that we don’t create space for that healing,” said Jolie Wills, a cognitive scientist who led the mental health response for the Red Cross after the 2010 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand.
While some survivors need professional support to overcome their trauma, a lot of recovery can happen outside of a clinic’s walls. Maui residents have leaned on programs that help them reconnect — to themselves, their community, land and culture.
Horses to process trauma
After writing down her words, Dapitan sat on a folding chair inside a horse corral. A few feet away, Maverick, a 22-year-old Tennessee Walker rolled in the dirt.
Janice Dapitan brushes a horse named Maverick during a philanthropy-supported equine therapy program at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
The program’s founder, Paige DePonte, sat in front of her and began a technique called brainspotting. She moved a small wand in front of Dapitan’s eyes to stimulate certain eye movements believed to help the brain process trauma. Later, Dapitan approached Maverick. She brushed his dark mane. After leading him once around the corral, she stopped, rested her arms over his back, and began to cry.
“He just lets you lean on him,” she said. “I can feel myself healing because somebody is at least letting me lean on them.”
For her husband Kalani, the ranch’s quiet isolation, tucked on a hillside overlooking Maui’s south coast, gives him space to process what has happened. “Before we even met the horses, I was in tears,” he said. “The peacefulness really breaks your walls down.”
Kalani Dapitan talks to a horse named Missy during a philanthropy-supported equine therapy session at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Equine-assisted therapy participants don’t typically ride horses, but the animals’ presence alone can soothe people as they face their trauma. They might brush, walk and even talk to the animals, or the horses might just be nearby as facilitators take them through other methods of counseling or psychotherapy.
“Horses are incredible healers,” said DePonte, who started the program on her family’s cattle ranch in 2021 after observing the transformational effect the animals had on her own trauma recovery. “They are in a place of coherence all the time, not thinking about tomorrow, not thinking about yesterday.”
The program, now supported by grants from the Hawaii Community Foundation, Maui United Way, and other private donors, has provided more than 1,300 sessions for impacted residents.
Dapitan had already begun therapy before the fire to recover from a previous trauma, but she said time at the ranch feels different. “I think I got the most out of the horses in two days versus the year that I’ve been having regular counseling.”
Healing through connection
Holistic programs like these have helped meet the overwhelming need for support services after the Aug. 8, 2023 fire that killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000.
On top of the harrowing experiences of losing homes and loved ones, survivors are stressed and exhausted from the volatility of daily life — moving hotel rooms, changing schools, losing income.
“It’s been a pretty significant impact on people’s mental health,” said Tia Hartsock, director of Hawaii’s office of wellness and resilience. “Navigating bureaucratic systems while in a traumatic response has been very challenging.”
Kalani Dapitan reaches to pet a horse named Missy during an equine therapy session at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
In a Hawaii Department of Health survey of affected families two months after the fire, almost three-quarters of respondents said at least one person in their household had felt nervous, anxious or depressed in the preceding two weeks. At the six-month anniversary, more than half of survivors and one-third of all Maui residents surveyed by the University of Hawaii reported feeling depressive symptoms.
That’s expected after a disaster of such scale, said Wills, calling it “very normal reactions to a very abnormal situation.”
Providers, nonprofits, philanthropic groups and the government collaborated to reduce barriers to mental health treatment, like paying for people’s therapy sessions and staffing shelters and FEMA events with mental health practitioners.
But they knew residents also needed other options. “Clinical support wasn’t necessarily going to be right for everyone,” said Justina Acevedo-Cross, senior program manager at the Hawaii Community Foundation.
Numerous public and private funders are supporting programs that re-engage residents with land and people, which Hartsock calls “unbelievably helpful in the healing.”
Several are rooted in Native Hawaiian healing practices. Cultural practitioners with the organization Hui Ho’omalu offer lomilomi, or Hawaiian massage. Those sessions typically lead into kukakuka, or deep conversation, with Native Hawaiians trained in mental health support.
Impacted families also maintain taro patches, restore native plants and take cultural classes on protected land stewarded by the organization Ka’ehu. Aviva Libitsky and her son Nakana, 7, volunteer there at least once a week, scooping invasive snails out of kalo pools and cleaning litter from the shoreline.
Libitsky felt anxious for months after fleeing the Lahaina fire and losing the home she’d lived in since 2010. Working on the land calms her. “It helps you channel that frenetic energy and put it toward something useful.”
The Spirit Horse Ranch founder Paige DePonte walks with Maverick, one of the horses at her equine-assisted trauma-informed care facility, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
She and Nakana recently learned how to weave bracelets from the leaves of hala trees at one of Ka’ehu’s cultural workshops. They’ve gone to Spirit Horse Ranch, too. “We just focus on new opportunities, creating new memories.”
A new wave of need
As Maui enters its second year of recovery, providers are preparing for a new wave of people to seek help.
The last families are moving out of hotels and into the interim housing meant to carry them over until Lahaina rebuilds. That sudden stillness can trigger bigger emotions, said Acevedo-Cross. “They’re able to feel a bit more.”
Many who weren’t directly affected by the fires are now experiencing its impacts, as rents skyrocket, tourism jobs disappear, and friends and family move away.
For some, healing won’t come until Lahaina is rebuilt and the community can return home.
Janice Dapitan, right, wipes away tears during a session, part of a philanthropy-supported equine therapy program, with Paige DePonte as a horse named Maverick stands nearby at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
“We don’t have a hometown anymore,” said Kalani Dapitan. He misses his friends and family, and most of all his daughter. He worries constantly about what will happen to Lahaina, especially as a Native Hawaiian. “We’re unsure of our future, how our cultural aspect is going to pan out.”
With so much still uncertain, time at Spirit Horse Ranch helps the Dapitans stay present.
At the end of her session, Janice returned to the whiteboard to write the words that summed up her feelings. “Relaxed,” she wrote, and looked up. “That’s all.”
_____________
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
KANAIO, Hawaii — Fear. Anxiety. Anger. Depression. Overwhelmed.
Janice Dapitan began her second counseling session by writing those words on a whiteboard, reflecting what she felt in that moment. The day fire destroyed her hometown of Lahaina — and the struggles that have followed for nearly a year — still haunted her.
The fire killed her uncle. It burned the homes of seven family members. Her daughter narrowly escaped the blaze with her two children, but lost her house and moved to Las Vegas. The house Dapitan shares with her husband, Kalani, survived, but now it overlooks the burn zone. The view is a painful, constant reminder that the life they’d known is gone.
“There are so many triggers,” she said on a blustery July day. Her long black braids fell over a tank top with the word “Lahaina” printed in gold. “We can be okay today, and tomorrow it could be different. Everything is uncertain. Every day is a different challenge. We want to stay joyful, but it’s a process.”
One year after the Maui fires, thousands of residents share Dapitan’s struggle. They grieve the losses of loved ones and generational homes. They are haunted by their traumatic escapes and even by the guilt of surviving. They’ve endured months of instability — switching hotel rooms, schools and jobs. An estimated 1,500 families have left Maui, forced to start over thousands of miles from home.
But lately, Dapitan has enjoyed some relief, thanks to an equine-assisted therapy program at the Spirit Horse Ranch in Maui’s rural upcountry, an hour’s drive from Lahaina.
“The connection with the horses is different than connecting with machines or humans,” said Dapitan. “It’s almost like instant healing.”
After large-scale disasters, restoring a community’s mental wellness is as important as rebuilding infrastructure, experts say. And just as constructing an entire town can take years, so can healing its residents.
“We can be so focused on the bricks-and-mortar rebuild — because that’s challenging enough as it is — that we don’t create space for that healing,” said Jolie Wills, a cognitive scientist who led the mental health response for the Red Cross after the 2010 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand.
While some survivors need professional support to overcome their trauma, a lot of recovery can happen outside of a clinic’s walls. Maui residents have leaned on programs that help them reconnect — to themselves, their community, land and culture.
After writing down her words, Dapitan sat on a folding chair inside a horse corral. A few feet away, Maverick, a 22-year-old Tennessee Walker rolled in the dirt.
The program’s founder, Paige DePonte, sat in front of her and began a technique called brainspotting. She moved a small wand in front of Dapitan’s eyes to stimulate certain eye movements believed to help the brain process trauma. Later, Dapitan approached Maverick. She brushed his dark mane. After leading him once around the corral, she stopped, rested her arms over his back, and began to cry.
“He just lets you lean on him,” she said. “I can feel myself healing because somebody is at least letting me lean on them.”
For her husband Kalani, the ranch’s quiet isolation, tucked on a hillside overlooking Maui’s south coast, gives him space to process what has happened. “Before we even met the horses, I was in tears,” he said. “The peacefulness really breaks your walls down.”
Equine-assisted therapy participants don’t typically ride horses, but the animals’ presence alone can soothe people as they face their trauma. They might brush, walk and even talk to the animals, or the horses might just be nearby as facilitators take them through other methods of counseling or psychotherapy.
“Horses are incredible healers,” said DePonte, who started the program on her family’s cattle ranch in 2021 after observing the transformational effect the animals had on her own trauma recovery. “They are in a place of coherence all the time, not thinking about tomorrow, not thinking about yesterday.”
The program, now supported by grants from the Hawaii Community Foundation, Maui United Way, and other private donors, has provided more than 1,300 sessions for impacted residents.
Dapitan had already begun therapy before the fire to recover from a previous trauma, but she said time at the ranch feels different. “I think I got the most out of the horses in two days versus the year that I’ve been having regular counseling.”
Holistic programs like these have helped meet the overwhelming need for support services after the Aug. 8, 2023 fire that killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000.
On top of the harrowing experiences of losing homes and loved ones, survivors are stressed and exhausted from the volatility of daily life — moving hotel rooms, changing schools, losing income.
“It’s been a pretty significant impact on people’s mental health,” said Tia Hartsock, director of Hawaii’s office of wellness and resilience. “Navigating bureaucratic systems while in a traumatic response has been very challenging.”
In a Hawaii Department of Health survey of affected families two months after the fire, almost three-quarters of respondents said at least one person in their household had felt nervous, anxious or depressed in the preceding two weeks. At the six-month anniversary, more than half of survivors and one-third of all Maui residents surveyed by the University of Hawaii reported feeling depressive symptoms.
That’s expected after a disaster of such scale, said Wills, calling it “very normal reactions to a very abnormal situation.”
Providers, nonprofits, philanthropic groups and the government collaborated to reduce barriers to mental health treatment, like paying for people’s therapy sessions and staffing shelters and FEMA events with mental health practitioners.
But they knew residents also needed other options. “Clinical support wasn’t necessarily going to be right for everyone,” said Justina Acevedo-Cross, senior program manager at the Hawaii Community Foundation.
Numerous public and private funders are supporting programs that re-engage residents with land and people, which Hartsock calls “unbelievably helpful in the healing.”
Several are rooted in Native Hawaiian healing practices. Cultural practitioners with the organization Hui Ho’omalu offer lomilomi, or Hawaiian massage. Those sessions typically lead into kukakuka, or deep conversation, with Native Hawaiians trained in mental health support.
Impacted families also maintain taro patches, restore native plants and take cultural classes on protected land stewarded by the organization Ka’ehu. Aviva Libitsky and her son Nakana, 7, volunteer there at least once a week, scooping invasive snails out of kalo pools and cleaning litter from the shoreline.
Libitsky felt anxious for months after fleeing the Lahaina fire and losing the home she’d lived in since 2010. Working on the land calms her. “It helps you channel that frenetic energy and put it toward something useful.”
She and Nakana recently learned how to weave bracelets from the leaves of hala trees at one of Ka’ehu’s cultural workshops. They’ve gone to Spirit Horse Ranch, too. “We just focus on new opportunities, creating new memories.”
As Maui enters its second year of recovery, providers are preparing for a new wave of people to seek help.
The last families are moving out of hotels and into the interim housing meant to carry them over until Lahaina rebuilds. That sudden stillness can trigger bigger emotions, said Acevedo-Cross. “They’re able to feel a bit more.”
Many who weren’t directly affected by the fires are now experiencing its impacts, as rents skyrocket, tourism jobs disappear, and friends and family move away.
For some, healing won’t come until Lahaina is rebuilt and the community can return home.
“We don’t have a hometown anymore,” said Kalani Dapitan. He misses his friends and family, and most of all his daughter. He worries constantly about what will happen to Lahaina, especially as a Native Hawaiian. “We’re unsure of our future, how our cultural aspect is going to pan out.”
With so much still uncertain, time at Spirit Horse Ranch helps the Dapitans stay present.
At the end of her session, Janice returned to the whiteboard to write the words that summed up her feelings. “Relaxed,” she wrote, and looked up. “That’s all.”
_____________
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
ANKARA, Turkey — Special envoys from Turkey and Armenia convened at the countries’ shared border on Tuesday to resume discussions aimed at normalizing ties between the historic foes.
Turkey and Armenia have no formal relations, and their border has been closed since the 1990s. They agreed in late 2021 to improve relations and appointed special envoys to discuss ways toward reconciliation and the opening of the border.
Turkish Ambassador Serdar Kilic and his counterpart, Armenian parliament deputy speaker Ruben Rubinyan, met at the Alican-Margara border crossing, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said. It marked their fifth meeting since the launch of reconciliation efforts.
The Turkish ministry statement said the envoys agreed to streamline visa procedures for holders of diplomatic or official passports and to evaluate the technical requirements for operating a railway border gate.
They also “reemphasized their agreement to continue the normalization process without any preconditions,” the ministry added.
Turkey shut its border with Armenia in 1993, in a show of solidarity with close ally Azerbaijan, which was locked in a conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
In 2020, Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan in its six-week conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal that saw Azerbaijan gain control of a significant part of the region. Azerbaijan used Turkish military equipment, including combat drones, in the conflict.
Turkey and Armenia also have a long and bitter relationship over the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in massacres, deportations and forced marches that began in 1915 in Ottoman Turkey.
Historians widely view the event as genocide. Turkey vehemently rejects the label, conceding that many died in that era but insisting that the death toll is inflated and the deaths resulted from civil unrest.
HaberTurk television said the two envoys on Tuesday exchanged handshakes at the border before visiting the Turkish and Armenian sides of the frontier.
Kilic and Rubinyan met in Moscow in January 2022, followed by three meetings in Vienna that same year.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan held their first face-to-face meeting in 2022 on the sidelines of a European Political Community meeting in Prague.
Last year, Pashinyan traveled to Ankara to attend Erdogan’s inauguration following an election victory.
This is Ankara and Yerevan’s second attempt at reconciliation. Turkey and Armenia reached an agreement in 2009 to establish formal relations and open their border, but the agreement was never ratified.
The border gate was briefly opened in 2023 to allow in aid after a devastating earthquake hit parts of southern Turkey and northern Syria.
TOKYO — Earthquakes early Monday again struck Japan’s north-central region of Ishikawa, still recovering from the destruction left by a powerful quake on Jan. 1, but the latest shaking caused no major damage.
A magnitude 5.9 temblor on the northern top of the Noto Peninsula was followed minutes later by a 4.8 and then several smaller quakes within the next two hours, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. There was no tsunami.
Five houses that had been damaged in the Jan. 1 quake collapsed in Wajiima city, but no major damage or life-threatening injuries were reported, according to Ishikawa prefecture. A quake alarm in the town of Tsubata, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of the epicenter, surprised a resident in her 60s who fell from her bed but the injury was not life-threatening, prefectural officials said.
JMA seismology and tsunami official Satoshi Harada said Monday’s quakes were believed to be aftershocks of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake on Jan. 1. Seismic activity has since slightly subsided, but Harada urged people to be cautious, especially near buildings that were damaged earlier.
Shinkansen super-express trains and other train services were temporarily suspended for safety checks but most of them resumed, according to West Japan Railway Co.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority said no abnormalities were found at two nearby nuclear power plants. One of them, the Shika plant on the Noto Peninsula, had minor damage, though officials said that did not affect cooling functions of the two reactors.
Hokuriku Electric Power Co. said there were no power outages.
Monday’s rattlings rekindled fear among residents who are still struggling to recover from damages from the New Year’s quake. NHK public television showed a number of people who came out of their homes and temporary shelters to see if there were additional damage.
“Many people who have been living at evacuation centers must have been been frightened,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said, urging caution against potential falling rocks and landslides in areas that were shaken strongly.
Reconstruction comes slowly in mountainous areas on the peninsula, and many damaged houses remain untouched.
In Wajima, which was one of the hardest-hit areas, an inn operator told NHK that he immediately ducked under the desk at the reception when the first quake struck Monday. Nothing fell to the floor or broke, but it reminded him of the January shakings and made him worry that a big quake like that had occurred even five months later.
The Jan. 1 quake killed 260 people, including those who later died due to stress, illnesses and other causes linked to the quake, with three others still missing, according to the FDMA. Damages still remain, and more than 3,300 residents remain evacuated.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a preliminary magnitude-3.5 earthquake shook the area of South Pasadena Sunday morning just before 10 a.m.
Light shaking was reported in the San Gabriel Valley, widespread parts of Los Angeles, Downey, Whittier, Studio City, Burbank and other parts of Los Angeles County.
According to the USGS, the earthquake had a recorded depth of 11.3 km.
Notable quake, preliminary info: M 3.5 – 4 km SSW of South Pasadena, CA https://t.co/EN5HNPmEtN
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Living in a tent in rebel-held northwestern Syria, Rudaina al-Salim and her family struggle to find enough water for drinking and other basic needs such as cooking and washing. Their encampment north of the city of Idlib hasn’t seen any aid in six months.
“We used to get food aid, hygiene items,” said the mother of four. “Now we haven’t had much in a while.”
Al-Salim’s story is similar to that of many in this region of Syria, where most of the 5.1 million people have been internally displaced — sometimes more than once — in the country’s civil war, now in its 14th year, and rely on aid to survive.
U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations have for years struggled with shrinking budgets, further worsened by the coronavirus pandemic and conflicts elsewhere. The wars in Ukraine and Sudan, and more recently Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip are the focus of the world’s attention.
Syria’s war, which has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of of 23 million, has long remained largely frozen and so are also efforts to find a viable political solution to end it. Meanwhile, millions of Syrians have been pulled into poverty, and struggle with accessing food and health care as the economy deteriorates across the country’s front lines.
Along with the deepening poverty, there is growing hostility in neighboring countries that host Syrian refugees and that struggle with crises of their own.
Aid organizations are now making their annual pitches to donors ahead of a fundraising conference in Brussels for Syria on Monday. But humanitarian workers believe that pledges will likely fall short and that further aid cuts would follow.
“We have moved from assisting 5.5 million a year to about 1.5 million people in Syria,” Carl Skau, the U.N. World Food Program’s deputy executive director, told The Associated Press. He spoke during a recent visit to Lebanon, which hosts almost 780,000 registered Syrian refugees — and hundreds of thousands of others who are undocumented.
“When I look across the world, this is the (aid) program that has shrunk the most in the shortest period for time,” Skau said.
Just 6% of the United Nations’ appeal for aid to Syria in 2024 has so far been secured ahead of Monday’s annual fundraising conference organized by the European Union, said David Carden, U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria.
For the northwestern region of Syria, that means the U.N. is only able to feed 600,000 out of the 3.6 million people facing food insecurity, meaning they lack access to sufficient food. The U.N. says some 12.9 million Syrians are food insecure across the country.
The U.N. hopes the Brussels conference can raise more than $4 billion in “lifesaving aid” to support almost two-thirds of the 16.7 million Syrians in need, both within the war-torn country and in neighboring countries, particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
At last year’s conference, donors pledged $10.3 billion — about $6 billion in grants and the rest in loans — just months after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and much of northern Syria, killing over 59,000 people, including 6,000 in Syria.
For northwestern Syria, an enclave under rebel control, aid “is literally a matter of life and death” this year, Carden told the AP during a recent visit to Idlib province. Without funding, 160 health facilities there would close by end of June, he said.
The International Rescue Committee’s head for Syria, Tanya Evans, said needs are “at their highest ever,” with increasing numbers of Syrians turning to child labor and taking on debt to pay for food and basics.
In Lebanon, where nearly 90% of Syrian refugees live in poverty, they also face flagging aid and increasing resentment from the Lebanese, struggling with their own country’s economic crisis since 2019. Disgruntled officials have accused the refugees of surging crime and competition in the job market.
Lebanon’s bickering political parties have united in a call for a crackdown on undocumented Syrian migrants and demand refugees return to so-called “safe zones” in Syria.
U.N. agencies, human rights groups and Western governments say there are no such areas.
Um Omar, a Syrian refugee from Homs, works in a grocery store in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli — an impoverished community that once warmly welcomed Syrian refugees.
For her work, she gets to bring home every day a bundle of bread and some vegetables to feed her family of five. They live rent-free in a tent on a plot of land that belongs to the grocery store’s owners.
“I have to leave the kids early in the morning without breakfast so I can work,” she said, asking to be identified only by her nickname, Arabic for “Omar’s mother.” She fears reprisals because of heightened hostilities against Syrians.
The shrinking U.N. aid they receive does not pay the bills. Her husband, who shares her fears for their safety, used to work as a day laborer but has rarely left their home in weeks.
She says deportation to Syria, where President Bashar Assad’s government is firmly entrenched, would spell doom for her family.
“If my husband was returned to Syria, he’ll either go to jail or (face) forced conscription,” she explains.
Still, many in Lebanon tell her family, “you took our livelihoods,” Um Omar said. There are also those who tell them they should leave, she added, so that the Lebanese “will finally catch a break.”
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Living in a tent in rebel-held northwestern Syria, Rudaina al-Salim and her family struggle to find enough water for drinking and other basic needs such as cooking and washing. Their encampment north of the city of Idlib hasn’t seen any aid in six months.
“We used to get food aid, hygiene items,” said the mother of four. “Now we haven’t had much in a while.”
Al-Salim’s story is similar to that of many in this region of Syria, where most of the 5.1 million people have been internally displaced — sometimes more than once — in the country’s civil war, now in its 14th year, and rely on aid to survive.
U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations have for years struggled with shrinking budgets, further worsened by the coronavirus pandemic and conflicts elsewhere. The wars in Ukraine and Sudan, and more recently Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip are the focus of the world’s attention.
Syria’s war, which has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of of 23 million, has long remained largely frozen and so are also efforts to find a viable political solution to end it. Meanwhile, millions of Syrians have been pulled into poverty, and struggle with accessing food and health care as the economy deteriorates across the country’s front lines.
Along with the deepening poverty, there is growing hostility in neighboring countries that host Syrian refugees and that struggle with crises of their own.
Aid organizations are now making their annual pitches to donors ahead of a fundraising conference in Brussels for Syria on Monday. But humanitarian workers believe that pledges will likely fall short and that further aid cuts would follow.
“We have moved from assisting 5.5 million a year to about 1.5 million people in Syria,” Carl Skau, the U.N. World Food Program’s deputy executive director, told The Associated Press. He spoke during a recent visit to Lebanon, which hosts almost 780,000 registered Syrian refugees — and hundreds of thousands of others who are undocumented.
“When I look across the world, this is the (aid) program that has shrunk the most in the shortest period for time,” Skau said.
Just 6% of the United Nations’ appeal for aid to Syria in 2024 has so far been secured ahead of Monday’s annual fundraising conference organized by the European Union, said David Carden, U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria.
For the northwestern region of Syria, that means the U.N. is only able to feed 600,000 out of the 3.6 million people facing food insecurity, meaning they lack access to sufficient food. The U.N. says some 12.9 million Syrians are food insecure across the country.
The U.N. hopes the Brussels conference can raise more than $4 billion in “lifesaving aid” to support almost two-thirds of the 16.7 million Syrians in need, both within the war-torn country and in neighboring countries, particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
At last year’s conference, donors pledged $10.3 billion — about $6 billion in grants and the rest in loans — just months after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and much of northern Syria, killing over 59,000 people, including 6,000 in Syria.
For northwestern Syria, an enclave under rebel control, aid “is literally a matter of life and death” this year, Carden told the AP during a recent visit to Idlib province. Without funding, 160 health facilities there would close by end of June, he said.
The International Rescue Committee’s head for Syria, Tanya Evans, said needs are “at their highest ever,” with increasing numbers of Syrians turning to child labor and taking on debt to pay for food and basics.
In Lebanon, where nearly 90% of Syrian refugees live in poverty, they also face flagging aid and increasing resentment from the Lebanese, struggling with their own country’s economic crisis since 2019. Disgruntled officials have accused the refugees of surging crime and competition in the job market.
Lebanon’s bickering political parties have united in a call for a crackdown on undocumented Syrian migrants and demand refugees return to so-called “safe zones” in Syria.
U.N. agencies, human rights groups and Western governments say there are no such areas.
Um Omar, a Syrian refugee from Homs, works in a grocery store in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli — an impoverished community that once warmly welcomed Syrian refugees.
For her work, she gets to bring home every day a bundle of bread and some vegetables to feed her family of five. They live rent-free in a tent on a plot of land that belongs to the grocery store’s owners.
“I have to leave the kids early in the morning without breakfast so I can work,” she said, asking to be identified only by her nickname, Arabic for “Omar’s mother.” She fears reprisals because of heightened hostilities against Syrians.
The shrinking U.N. aid they receive does not pay the bills. Her husband, who shares her fears for their safety, used to work as a day laborer but has rarely left their home in weeks.
She says deportation to Syria, where President Bashar Assad’s government is firmly entrenched, would spell doom for her family.
“If my husband was returned to Syria, he’ll either go to jail or (face) forced conscription,” she explains.
Still, many in Lebanon tell her family, “you took our livelihoods,” Um Omar said. There are also those who tell them they should leave, she added, so that the Lebanese “will finally catch a break.”
TAPACHULA, Mexico — A strong earthquake shook the border of Mexico and Guatemala early Sunday, driving frightened residents into the streets.
The temblor struck just before 6 a.m. near the Mexican border town of Suchiate, where a river by the same name divides the two countries. The epicenter was just off the Pacific coast, 10 miles (16 kilometers) west-southwest of Brisas Barra de Suchiate where the river empties into the sea.
The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.4, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and a depth of 47 miles (75 kilometers).
In Mexico, there were no immediate reports of damage, but more mountainous, remote parts of the border are prone to landslides.
Across the border Guatemala’s national disaster prevention agency shared photos of small landslides onto highways in the Quetzaltenango region and large cracks in walls in a hospital in San Marcos on its social media accounts, but there were no reports of deaths.
In Tapachula, near the border, civil defense brigades were moving through the city looking for signs of damage.
Didier Solares, an official with Suchiate’s Civil Defense agency, said so far they had not found damage.
“Luckily, everything is good,” Solares said. “We are talking with companies, to the (rural areas) via radio and there’s nothing, there’s no damage thank God,” he said.
The early morning quake still gave people a fright.
In the mountainous and picturesque colonial city of San Cristobal, the shaking was strong.
“Here we got up because we have the seismic alert service,” said resident Joaquin Morales. “The alert woke me up because it comes 30 seconds before (the quake).”
In Tuxtla Chico, a town near Tapachula, María Guzmán, a teacher said: “It was horrible, it felt strong. It was a real scare.”
