AFP UK

Authorities in California’s beachfront Orange County cities scrambled Sunday to mitigate the fallout from a major oil spill off the coast that caused “substantial ecological impacts.” 

As of Sunday, the oil plume from the 126,000-gallon (480,000 liters) spill of post-production crude was an estimated 5.8 nautical miles (6.7 miles, 10 kilometers) long and stretched along the popular shorelines of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, Huntington Beach city authorities said in a statement. 

“The spill has significantly affected Huntington Beach, with substantial ecological impacts occurring at the beach and at the Huntington Beach Wetlands,” the statement said.

The spill started around 9:00 am (1600 GMT) on Saturday, the Coast Guard said.

In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, oil and dead animals had begun washing up on Huntington Beach, a city of around 200,000 people located about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley tweeted.

“We’ve started to find dead birds and fish washing up on the shore,” she said.

Foley said in a statement she would meet with the environmental health office and city representatives on Sunday. 

“We are deeply concerned by the events today,” she said.

“The ramifications will extend further than the visible oil and odor that our residents are dealing with at the moment. The impact to the environment is irreversible.”

At a press conference Sunday afternoon, officials warned residents not to touch or try to save any wildlife themselves, but to instead call local authorities to alert them to animals affected by the oil. 

“At this time, we have scout teams out on the beaches, surveying, assessing the beaches for any wildlife that may be impacted or oiled,” lieutenant Christian Corbo of California’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response said.

– ‘Potential contamination’ –

At the Sunday press conference, Coast Guard captain Rebecca Ore acknowledged the situation “is very upsetting for citizens here in Southern California.”

Residents were warned to steer clear of the shoreline, and the ocean was closed to swimming and surfing “due to potential contamination,” the city said, adding that the final day of the Pacific Airshow had been canceled. 

The Coast Guard ran point on a unified command of federal, state, county and city agencies established to tackle the spill, with fire and marine safety personnel deployed to implement environmental containment efforts.

“The leak has not been completely stopped, preliminary patching has been completed to repair the oil spill site,” the city statement said.

“The size of the spill demanded prompt and aggressive action,” it added.

Ore said authorities were working to mitigate ecological damage in the “dynamic situation,” including through the use of booms, long floating tubes deployed on the surface of the water to contain spilled oil.

Foley said the toxicity of the crude was “concerning enough that the city has deployed a Haz Mat team to further assess the situation.”

It was not immediately clear what caused the spill from what Foley said was a pipeline breach connected to an oil rig offshore. An investigation has been launched into the incident, she added. 

Authorities in California’s beachfront Orange County cities scrambled Sunday to mitigate the fallout from a major oil spill off the coast that caused “substantial ecological impacts.” 

As of Sunday, the oil plume from the 126,000-gallon (480,000 liters) spill of post-production crude was an estimated 5.8 nautical miles (6.7 miles, 10 kilometers) long and stretched along the popular shorelines of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, Huntington Beach city authorities said in a statement. 

“The spill has significantly affected Huntington Beach, with substantial ecological impacts occurring at the beach and at the Huntington Beach Wetlands,” the statement said.

The spill started around 9:00 am (1600 GMT) on Saturday, the Coast Guard said.

In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, oil and dead animals had begun washing up on Huntington Beach, a city of around 200,000 people located about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley tweeted.

“We’ve started to find dead birds and fish washing up on the shore,” she said.

Foley said in a statement she would meet with the environmental health office and city representatives on Sunday. 

“We are deeply concerned by the events today,” she said.

“The ramifications will extend further than the visible oil and odor that our residents are dealing with at the moment. The impact to the environment is irreversible.”

At a press conference Sunday afternoon, officials warned residents not to touch or try to save any wildlife themselves, but to instead call local authorities to alert them to animals affected by the oil. 

“At this time, we have scout teams out on the beaches, surveying, assessing the beaches for any wildlife that may be impacted or oiled,” lieutenant Christian Corbo of California’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response said.

– ‘Potential contamination’ –

At the Sunday press conference, Coast Guard captain Rebecca Ore acknowledged the situation “is very upsetting for citizens here in Southern California.”

Residents were warned to steer clear of the shoreline, and the ocean was closed to swimming and surfing “due to potential contamination,” the city said, adding that the final day of the Pacific Airshow had been canceled. 

The Coast Guard ran point on a unified command of federal, state, county and city agencies established to tackle the spill, with fire and marine safety personnel deployed to implement environmental containment efforts.

“The leak has not been completely stopped, preliminary patching has been completed to repair the oil spill site,” the city statement said.

“The size of the spill demanded prompt and aggressive action,” it added.

Ore said authorities were working to mitigate ecological damage in the “dynamic situation,” including through the use of booms, long floating tubes deployed on the surface of the water to contain spilled oil.

Foley said the toxicity of the crude was “concerning enough that the city has deployed a Haz Mat team to further assess the situation.”

It was not immediately clear what caused the spill from what Foley said was a pipeline breach connected to an oil rig offshore. An investigation has been launched into the incident, she added. 

A Jordanian hospital has successfully performed the country’s first operation to separate conjoined twins, seven-month-old babies from Yemen, the chief surgeon announced Sunday.

It was “a rare and delicate” procedure which is “a medical success for the whole kingdom”, said the doctor, Fawzi al-Hammouri.

The nearly eight-hour operation which required 25 surgeons and technical advisers was performed in July.

But Amman’s Specialised Hospital delayed any announcement because “after the operation they (the babies) needed intensive care, artificial respiration and intravenous feeding for a long time”, he said.

“We wanted to wait until we were sure 100 percent that things went smoothly.”

Now the twins, Ahmed and Mohammed, are in “excellent health”, Hammouri told AFP.

“The chances of their survival are very great. They have become like any normal child. The danger has disappeared,” he said.

A United Nations medical flight had brought the babies and their parents to Jordan in February.

Born in mid-December in Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sanaa, they were in critical condition.

“When they arrived, they both weighed three kilograms and 700 grams (eight pounds). We waited until they weighed nine kilograms together” before separating them, Hammouri said.

The babies are still in Jordan with their parents but expected to return home in two or three weeks, he added.

Seven years of war between the Huthi rebels and pro-government forces have devastated health services in Yemen.

About 80 percent of the country’s 30 million people, long the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, are dependent on aid.

In February 2019, conjoined twins died in Sanaa two weeks after their birth.

Conjoined twins develop when an early embryo only partially separates, to form two individuals who will remain physically connected, the Mayo Clinic says on its website.

Many conjoined twins are stillborn or die shortly after birth, but advances in surgery and technology have improved survival rates.

Authorities in California’s beachfront Orange County cities scrambled Sunday to mitigate the fallout from a major oil spill off the coast that caused “substantial ecological impacts.” 

As of Sunday, the oil slick plume from the 126,000-gallon (480,000 liters) spill of post-production crude was an estimated 5.8 nautical miles (6.7 miles, 10 kilometers) long and stretched along popular shorelines of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, Huntington Beach city authorities said in a statement.  

“The spill has significantly affected Huntington Beach, with substantial ecological impacts occurring at the beach and at the Huntington Beach Wetlands,” the statement said.

The spill started around 9:00 am (1600 GMT) on Saturday and spread approximately 13 square miles (34 square kilometers), several miles off the coast, the Coast Guard said.

In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, oil and dead animals had begun washing up on Huntington Beach, a city of around 200,000 people located about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley tweeted.

“We’ve started to find dead birds and fish washing up on the shore,” she said.

Foley said in a statement she would meet with the environmental health office and city representatives on Sunday. 

“We are deeply concerned by the events today,” she said.

“The ramifications will extend further than the visible oil and odor that our residents are dealing with at the moment. The impact to the environment is irreversible.”

– ‘Potential contamination’ –

Residents were warned to steer clear of the shoreline, and the ocean was closed to swimming and surfing “due to potential contamination,” the city said, adding that the final day of the Pacific Airshow had been canceled. 

The Coast Guard ran point on a unified command of federal, state, county and city agencies established to tackle the spill, with fire and marine safety personnel deployed to implement environmental containment efforts.

“The leak has not been completely stopped, preliminary patching has been completed to repair the oil spill site,” the city statement said.

“The size of the spill demanded prompt and aggressive action,” it added.

Foley said the toxicity of the crude was “concerning enough that the city has deployed a Haz Mat team to further assess the situation.”

It was not immediately clear what caused the spill from what Foley said was a pipeline breach connected to an oil rig offshore. An investigation has been launched into the incident, she added. 

The sharp rise in wholesale gas prices is spilling over into the oil market, with looming demand for electricity generation and heating likely to further spur the sector this winter.

The spike in demand and consumption could lead the OPEC+ alliance of oil exporters, which meets in Vienna on Monday, to scale up their production plans.

“We could see an additional oil demand boost of nearly one million barrels per day (bpd) for December 2021, half of which we deem quite likely to materialise from incremental oil-for-power generation in Asia,” said Bjornar Tonhaugen, an analyst Rystad Energy.

“The remaining half is more uncertain and hinges on a colder-than-normal start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, which would drive oil for heating.”

– Switch to oil –

If gas prices remain prohibitively high, some countries in the Middle East and Asia may explore temporarily increasing use of their oil-fired power plants, according to Fitch analyst Dmitry Marinchenko.

Overall, oil-fired generation represents only a small portion of global electricity production, around three percent in 2019, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

That lags far behind 37 percent for coal and 24 percent for natural gas. 

However, Tony Syme, macroeconomic expert at the University of Salford Business School, said that only “a small minority of power plants” in Britain and the US can switch between coal and gas for power generation.

“This number has been declining over the last three decades as the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels has become more important,” he said. 

The price of crude oil, which is subject to many other factors, has risen following the surge in gas prices, but not as sharply. 

– OPEC intervention? –

The additional demand for oil amid the gas price spike is difficult to quantify, but could be “up to 320,000 bpd… over the next six months in Asia and Europe”, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.

US bank Goldman Sachs estimated “the potential capacity for gas-to-oil substitution could be larger should gas rally further, of up to 1.35 million bpd in power and 0.6 million bpd in industry” in Asia and Europe.

However, this volume represents only two percent of global oil demand, which is expected to pass the 100 million barrels per day mark next year, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC.

“While manageable from an oil market perspective, such a one-standard deviation weather shock would nonetheless represent $5 per barrel upside to our $80 per barrel Brent forecast,” Goldman Sachs said.

Members of the oil exporters’ cartel and its allies, together known as OPEC+, must decide whether to ramp up oil production or risk further price inflation.

Olivier Daguin, an investor at OFI AM, told AFP the extent of the switch from gas to oil “will depend mainly on the difference in price between the two”.

The gap has widened considerably in recent days.

– ‘Irresistible’ –

In Europe, gas prices continue to soar.

The Title Transfer Facility (TTF), a Europe-wide virtual trading point for natural gas in the Netherlands, reached the 100 euros ($116, £86) per megawatt-hour (MWh) mark for the first time in its history on Friday.

This is five times more than at the start of the year, while oil prices have doubled over the same period.

European gas is now roughly twice as expensive as Brent North Sea crude oil — which cost $80.75 dollars per barrel on Tuesday, its highest price in three years — using notoriously difficult conversion methods

“Asia spot natural gas prices are now trading at near the equivalent of $180 per barrel of Brent crude, meaning that oil’s appeal as a gas substitute for power generation is almost irresistible,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at OANDA.

The people of Rome began voting on Sunday to elect a new mayor who will have the daunting task of tackling poor public transport and disastrous rubbish management in the Italian capital, dubbed one of the dirtiest cities in the world.

Across the country from the Eternal City to Milan, Naples and Bologna, voters were heading to the urns until Monday evening for municipal elections being closely watched as a test ahead of a general election in 2023.

But in Rome — one of the world’s filthiest cities, according to a ranking last month by the British magazine Time Out — residents are more concerned with the perennial transport, flooding, waste and pothole woes in this city of 2.8 million inhabitants.

So bad is the rubbish management that wild boars are regularly seen wandering in residential areas, attracted by the pile-up of waste.

In the picturesque neighbourhood of Trastevere, where bins often overflow onto the cobbles, 60-year-old resident Tiziana De Silvestro, out walking her dog, said the root of the problem was rubbish left overnight outside bars and restaurants.

“Now the city is full of animals, crows, seagulls, not to mention mice and cockroaches,” she said.

– ‘Tomorrow cholera’ –

Rome’s current mayor, Virginia Raggi from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), has won praise for taking on the city’s fierce new mafia, the Casamonica family of loan sharks and drug traffickers.

But her widely-mocked plans to use sheep as lawnmowers and bees to combat pollution — while rotting refuse piles up next to playgrounds, buses spontaneously combust in the heat and weeds run wild — may cost her dearly.

The candidate of the right-wing alliance, Nicola Michetti, is likely to pocket the most votes due to a split on the left, according to the last polls published before a pre-election blackout.

But he is not predicted to get over the 50 percent of votes needed to avoid a run-off in two weeks — and polls say he may then lose in round two to the Democratic Party’s Roberto Gualtieri, a former economy minister.

Lawyer Michetti, 55, says pick him to clean up the city, or “today we have seagulls and boars, tomorrow it could be cholera”.

His champion is the head of far-right Brothers of Italy party Giorgia Meloni, who said Rome had become an international joke.

Gualtieri and rival centre-left candidate Carlo Calenda, meanwhile, have called for round tables with experts to tackle the problem of the wild boars.

Some 12 million voters are eligible to cast ballots in the elections, which are being held not only in the country’s largest cities but in more than 1,000 smaller centres, including Morterone in Lombardy, which has just 33 inhabitants.

Red-roofed, left-wing stalwart Bologna is considered a safe seat, while the centre-left is confident of taking Milan and Naples too. The race is closer in Turin, which the centre-right is hungrily eyeing.

Congo Mirador was once an idyllic spot: a community of homes on stilts that seemed to float on the calm waters of a lagoon in western Venezuela. Now, the community is inundated with mud, a victim of silt generated by the Catatumbo river.

Most of its residents have left, and Congo Mirador is slowly fading away.

The river’s source is in Colombia, and it flows into Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo, one of the biggest lakes in South America. 

The Catatumbo’s path has been diverted numerous times over the years, slowly sending muddy sediment, plant life, tree branches and other debris into the village — to the point where it has been overwhelmed by the mess.

Where once there were fish, now there are weeds. 

“There was a magnificent lake, and now it’s become a jungle,” laments Euclides Villasmil, one of the few residents of Congo Mirador who has remained there.

Only about 10 families, out of 200 who once lived there, are still in their homes. The village once was buoyant and loud; now, it’s dead quiet.

No one knows exactly when the invasion of Congo Mirador actually began, but residents say sedimentation was already starting to ruin the pristine waters back in 2013, when tiny mud islands formed.

An aerial view of the village captured by a camera drone leaves the false impression that Congo Mirador exists in the middle of a lush green field — in fact, it’s a swamp and life is increasingly difficult.

Along with the mud, there are snakes, toads and other creatures, and parasites that have progressively changed the ecosystem to such an extent that the village is a ghost town.

– ‘Little Venice’ –

Only a few pillars remain of the medical clinic that once served the village’s 700 residents. Some homes have been ransacked, stripped of anything of value: from the doors to the windows, even the faucets and pipes.

Some people even dismantled their homes to rebuild them on a neighboring lagoon.

Janeth Diaz, 59, is among those who abandoned her home. She now lives in Puerto Concha, a three-hour journey by boat from Congo Mirador, which she reminisces about fondly.

“June 1, 2016 was one of the saddest days of my life,” she said, referring to the date she left the village.

Diaz says Congo Mirador was her “little Venice” where “we were all one big family.”

But when the mud came, she said, “I felt like it had a hold on me.”

Her mother died only a few months after they left Congo Mirador.

Douglas Camarillo, 62, refuses to leave. Submerged in mud up to his chest, with sweat on his brow, he spent two weeks clearing a path of just 130 meters (yards) so that he and his neighbors could use their boats.

“I’m not going to let my village die. As long as I am alive, the village will not die,” he pledged.

The church has remained intact, even if it’s been several years since anyone celebrated Mass there. 

A rusted chalice sits atop the altar adorned with plastic flowers that have survived the ravages of time, all under the watchful gaze of a statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the patron saint of seafaring communities.

The exodus from Congo Mirador has made life even harder, as the power plant that provided electricity to the village has not been operational for years, and the telephone antenna does not work.

Fuel, which used to be nearly free in this oil-producing nation, has been hard to acquire and expensive in recent years as Venezuela spiraled into political and economic uncertainty. 

“My mother died in Maracaibo, two (of my eight brothers) and myself could not go to her burial because we didn’t have any gas,” said Erwin Gotera, 33, who was born in the area. 

Gotera, a father himself, says half of what he makes from fishing is now used to pay for fuel. 

“Here, gas is killing us,” he said.

Haydee Rodriguez has just set free a sloth named Maruja 58 in a forested area outside Caracas and is watching her get settled.

“Look how pretty! It’s dancing in the trees,” said Rodriguez, who along with her husband Juan Carlos shares a passion for the lethargic mammals that spend a lot of time hanging upside down from treetops. 

Maruja 58 is the 58th sloth the couple has rescued, cared for and freed through the Chuwie Foundation, the organization they founded that works to help these animals native to the rainforests of Central and South America.

Chuwie was the first sloth they rescued, and his face provides the logo of the foundation, located in San Antonio de los Altos, a suburb of Venezuela’s capital.

“We also want to help with research. To know how many sloths there are, for instance, and how they live,” said Juan Carlos Rodriguez.

There are no official figures for the sloth population in Venezuela, but deforestation in Latin America has reduced the size of the animals’ habitat, says the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature says the pygmy three-toed sloth is in danger of extinction, and another species — the maned three-toed sloth — is considered “vulnerable.”

Near Caracas, the sloths face three main threats: dogs that attack them, getting hit by cars and, above all, high voltage wires that run through forested areas. The sloths try to cling to them and are electrocuted.

That is what happened to Chuwie. He lost part of his left arm and suffered severe burns. The Rodriguez family, who had turned the injured animal over to a vet, adopted him.

To raise awareness of the story, Haydee, who works in the news media, and Juan Carlos, a graphic designer, created a social media account — @Chuwieelgalan — that now has almost 10,000 followers on Instagram. 

They learned from environmental specialists in Costa Rica how to care for these animals, and in just a few months, the Rodriguez family started going out to help injured ones.

“Without even trying, we became sloth rescuers,” said Haydee. 

She and Juan Carlos have kept their day jobs, but the sloths now take up most of their time.

They currently have six sloths with them at home recovering so they can be released. One was severely bitten by dogs, a baby one was found without its mother and another suffered a shock from a high voltage cable. The couple wants to build a bigger facility to shelter more animals.

– ‘Curse of the eternal smile’ – 

Juan Carlos goes out every day to find fresh leaves from specific trees to feed the sloths he is hosting, and says he needs 1.6 kilograms (3.5 pounds) of them.

To pay for all of this, Haydee Rodriguez developed and now sells things with Chuwie’s face on them, such as caps, coffee mugs, T-shirts and earrings.

“People are really moved by Chuwie. He is a survivor,” says Juan Carlos, “but we will never be able to release him.” The animal is severely disabled now.

On their website, the couple carefully avoids posting photos of them with Chuwie in their arms.

“They are not pets or stuffed animals,” said Juan Carlos.

“Sloths have the curse of the eternal smile. Even when they are in agony, it looks like they are smiling,” he said, adding that people who want to domesticate them are one of the dangers facing these creatures.

When a telephone rings out of the blue, they learn there is a sloth in jeopardy. Juan Carlos and Haydee jump into their car and race to a nearby neighborhood.

A sloth is hanging from high up in a palm tree after fleeing from a dog that bit it on the leg, explains the dog owner, Maria Antonia Mugica.

“It went up and up, and has been there since yesterday,” said Mugica. “I called so it can be rescued.”

Juan Carlos manages to bring the sloth down. The animal is fine, but they must move it away from the residential area.

A few kilometers away, the couple sees an area with no high voltage wires and with the kind of trees that sloths like. They free this newly assisted one. Her name is Maruja 58.

Authorities managed to bring a major fire on a tiny Honduran resort island under control Saturday, after the blaze consumed dozens of homes and forced 400 people to evacuate.

“The fire is 100 percent controlled,” said the head of the government’s Permanent Intervention Commission (COPECO), Max Gonzales, at a mid-afternoon press conference.

A huge cloud of black smoke rose in the early morning from the island of Guanaja, located in the Caribbean off the north coast of mainland Honduras. Its 6,000 inhabitants live mainly from tourism.

Military helicopters dropped bags of water on what the island’s deputy mayor Mireya Guillen described as “uncontrollable” flames.

Aided by police, people raced to save beds, furniture and other belongings as the blaze approached, video on social media showed.

Videos shared by local media showed the extent of the devastation, with “90 houses destroyed, 120 damaged… 2,500 people directly affected, three injured and three others to be confirmed,” Gonzales said.

The blaze also forced the evacuation of some 400 people, firefighters and other authorities added. Emergency accommodations were set up in a church and a school.

The fire started for unknown reasons in the wee hours of Saturday in seaside homes and spread quickly.

Guanaja, which measures 19 square kilometers (7 square miles), is one of the three Bay Islands of Honduras. The others are Roatan and Utila.

The European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft has sent back its first images of Mercury, the nearest planet to the Sun, the European Space Agency said Saturday.

The images were obtained almost three years after the unmanned mission vessel was launched aboard an Ariane 5 Rocket.

The cameras attached the BepiColombo provided black-and-white images, the ESA said in a statement.

But as the spacecraft arrived on the night side of the planet, conditions were “not ideal” for taking images at its closest approach to the planet, an altitude of 199 kilometres (124 miles), so the closest was from about 1,000 km.

The region shown is part of Mercury’s northern hemisphere, including large craters and an area flooded by lava billions of years ago.

“The flyby was flawless from the spacecraft point of view, and it’s incredible to finally see our target planet,” said Elsa Montagnon, Spacecraft Operations Manager for the mission.

The BepiColombo mission will study all aspects of this mysterious inner planet from its core to surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere, “to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star”, said the agency.

Mercury is also the only rocky planet orbiting the Sun beside our own to have a magnetic field.

Magnetic fields are generated by a liquid core but given its size, Mercury’s should have grown cold and solid by now, as Mars did.

This anomaly might be due to some feature of the core’s composition, something BepiColombo’s instruments will measure with much greater precision than has been possible so far.

On its surface, Mercury is a planet of extremes, vacillating between hot days of about 430 degrees Celsius (more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit) to super-frosty nights of minus 180C (minus 290F). 

Those days and nights last nearly three Earth months each.

Earlier missions have detected evidence of ice in the deepest recesses of the planet’s polar craters.

Scientists speculate that this may have accumulated from comets crashing onto Mercury’s surface.

BepiColombo is due to make five more flybys of Mercury during a complex trajectory that will also see the satellite fly past Venus and Earth.

It could not be sent directly to Mercury, as the Sun’s pull is so strong that a huge braking manoeuvre would be needed to place the satellite successfully, requiring too much fuel for a spacecraft of this size. The mission will last for around another five years.

The gravity exerted by the Earth and Venus — known as gravitational assist — allows it to slow down ‘naturally’ during its journey.