#going back to poland for like 4 days this coming week ill wave from the plane

[not-equippedforthis]

hi :) i went to the beach today & saw an incredible amount of jellyfish!! it was so cool!! reminded me of you (bc jellyfish are your favourite animals), so here i am saying hi :)

have a lovely day <33

hiiiii!!!! <333 sorry ive gone AWOL ilysm im just. ouurhhhh

thats so cool 😭😭 actually crying thank you for thinking of me skgbsng. on a somewhat unrelated note, i have a vague understanding of what you look like based on picrew challenges but i still see that specific image of DANC holmes and go omg...anna....

going to a beach and seeing jellyfish would cure me, i think (maybe i need to move to belgium...tho im pretty sure we have some biolum beaches heree??). i hope you had a good day!! i saw your tags a while back and i feel you with sometimes feeling better going and exploring by yourself rather than w family (iirc? bad memory gang sorry). idk what ur situation is like but sometimes its just so much more fun/relaxing. i think going to a bioluminescent beach is on my bucket list - ive done my epq project on biolum, i adore it, i adore jellyfish. i need to go to one sooo fucking badly shaking you i need to shake my hand in the water and watch it glow back

i also saw your bio energy level and i hope you feel better <33 have a nice week :]

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Two travelers submitted fake vaccination cards before flying to Toronto. Each was fined nearly $16,000. (Washington Post) Before two passengers flew from the United States to Toronto last month, they submitted required copies of their vaccination cards and negative coronavirus test results to a portal reviewed by Canadian authorities. But it wasn’t until they arrived in Canada the week of July 18 that officials discovered the documents the pair presented were fraudulent, the Public Health Agency of Canada said in a news release Friday. Now, each passenger must pay fines totaling nearly $16,000 (about $20,000 Canadian) for submitting “false documentation” and failing to comply with quarantine and testing requirements. Both travelers were Canadian citizens. In Canada, airline passengers who are not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus must spend three nights upon arrival at a hotel approved by the government and submit proof of a 14-day quarantine plan, even if they have tested negative for the coronavirus or have already recovered from the illness. They must also submit proof of a negative coronavirus test taken at least 72 hours before their flight. Upon arrival, passengers must get a second coronavirus test and collect a kit containing a test they must take on Day 8 of their quarantine.

Senators produce $1T infrastructure bill (AP) After much delay, senators unveiled a nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, wrapping up days of painstaking work on the inches-thick bill and launching what is certain to be a lengthy debate over President Joe Biden’s big priority. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act clocked in at some 2,700 pages, and senators could begin amending it soon. Despite the hurry-up-and-wait during a rare weekend session, emotions bubbled over once the bill was produced Sunday night. A key part of Biden’s agenda, the bipartisan bill is the first phase of the president’s infrastructure plan. It calls for $550 billion in new spending over five years above projected federal levels, what could be one of the more substantial expenditures on the nation’s roads, bridges, waterworks, broadband and the electric grid in years.

Abandoned oil wells (AP) In 1859, Pennsylvania became the site of the first successful commercial oil well in the United States. What followed was an oil boom that lasted decades, but one where nobody was actually keeping track of where people dug wells, so the technology to seal defunct or abandoned wells was still decades off. As a result, Pennsylvania is estimated to contain 100,000 to 560,000 unplugged abandoned oil wells around the state, an environmental and safety disaster. To date, Pennsylvania has located 8,700 orphaned wells. Across the country, there are an estimated 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells.

Europe’s heat dome (Foreign Policy) Europe could see new record-high temperatures today as a heat dome continues to drive a heat wave across the continent’s southeast. The dry conditions have already contributed to wildfires in Greece and Italy, while in Turkey at least 8 people have died in fires that have blazed since last Wednesday. Turkey has seen an unusually high number of wildfires this year—133 in total. From 2003 to 2020 Turkey averaged 43 wildfires per year, according to EU data.

Sun-seekers enjoy European summer 'workcation' before office return (Reuters) Drawn by sun, sea and speedy Wi-Fi, remote workers are converging on Europe's southernmost islands to try "workcationing" before employers order them back to the office, giving battered tourism businesses a welcome boon. Combining holiday destinations with remote work is a growing trend in Spain and Portugal's sunniest archipelagos, as travel bans ease and the starved tourism industry offers discounted stays and dedicated workspaces. The remote workers register as tourists, making them hard to quantify, but evidence of their presence is ubiquitous, from new co-working spaces sprouting up to stickers advertising free, extra-powerful Wi-Fi in many restaurants, cafes and bars. The "Nomad List" website counted the Canary island of Tenerife among the 10 fastest-growing destinations for teleworking in the first seven months of 2021, after the trend began last year.

Boar battle (Washington Post) In the Brandenburg forest, a bounding 4-year-old black Belgian shepherd named Uschi picks up a scent. Wearing a neon high-visibility jacket, she stops by an overturned tree and barks. In the mud is the rotting carcass of a wild boar. It’s exactly what they spent the day hunting. As the world fights the coronavirus pandemic, teams in Europe are battling another outbreak: African swine fever. Hundreds of miles of fencing have been thrown up in Europe to stop its steady march west across the continent. In fenced-off “red zones,” teams work to clear the area of the infectious wild boars that have succumbed to the sickness and hunt any still alive in an attempt to break infection chains. While the virus cannot be passed to humans, it kills almost every pig it infects in about a week. The stakes are high for Germany, Europe’s largest pork producer, exporting $4.7 billion in pig products each year. The arrival of the virus in Germany’s wild boar population last year triggered bans on pork exports to countries outside Europe, wiping out $867 million in sales to China. Then, in mid-July, the first case was discovered in a domestic pig farm in Germany—exactly the spread that teams picking through forests had been hoping to prevent.

At an extraordinary Olympics, acts of kindness abound (AP) A surfer jumping in to translate for the rival who’d just beaten him. High-jumping friends agreeing to share a gold medal rather than move to a tiebreaker. Two runners falling in a tangle of legs, then helping each other to the finish line. In an extraordinary Olympic Games where mental health has been front and center, acts of kindness are everywhere. The world’s most competitive athletes have been captured showing gentleness and warmth to one another—celebrating, pep-talking, wiping away one another’s tears of disappointment. Runners Isaiah Jewett of the U.S. and Nijel Amos of Botswana got tangled and fell during the 800-meter semifinals. Rather than get angry, they helped each other to their feet, put their arms around each other and finished together.

Belarus athlete enters Poland's embassy in Tokyo after refusing to return home (Reuters) A Belarusian athlete at the centre of an Olympic standoff with her own country walked into Poland's embassy in Japan on Monday, a day after refusing to board a flight home she said she was being forced to take against her wishes by her team. Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, 24, would seek asylum in Poland, said a member of the local Belarus community who was in touch with her. Earlier, Polish foreign ministry official Marcin Przydacz wrote on Twitter that Tsimanouskaya has been "offered a humanitarian visa and is free to pursue her sporting career in Poland if she so chooses." In a brewing diplomatic incident on the sidelines of the Olympics, Tsimanouskaya's refusal to board the plane has thrown a harsh spotlight on discord in Belarus, a former Soviet state that is run with a tight grip by President Alexander Lukashenko. The sprinter, who was due to compete in the women's 200 metre heats on Monday, had her Games cut short when she said she was taken to the airport to board a Turkish Airlines flight. She then sought the protection of Japanese police at the airport.

Australia tightens COVID curbs as Brisbane extends lockdown, army patrols Sydney (Reuters) Australia’s Queensland state on Monday extended a COVID-19 lockdown in Brisbane, while soldiers began patrolling Sydney to enforce stay-at-home rules as Australia struggles to stop the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus spreading. Queensland said it had detected 13 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours—the biggest one-day rise the state has recorded in a year. The lockdown of Brisbane, Australia’s third-biggest city, was due to end on Tuesday but will now stay in place until late on Sunday. Australia is going through a cycle of stop-start lockdowns in several cities after the emergence of the fast-moving Delta strain, and such restrictions are likely to persist until the country reaches a much higher level of vaccination coverage. Meanwhile the lockdown of Brisbane and several surrounding areas comes as Sydney, the biggest city in the country, begins its sixth week under stay-at-home orders.

U.S., Britain, Israel blame Iran for fatal drone strike on oil tanker; Tehran denies responsibility (Washington Post) The United States, Britain and Israel on Sunday all accused Iran of carrying out a drone attack last week on an oil tanker in the Arabian Sea that killed two people on board, raising fears of an escalating maritime war in the Middle East, as Tehran denied responsibility for the strike. American and Israeli officials had previously said that Thursday’s attack on the Liberian-flagged Mercer Street bore the hallmarks of an operation by Iran, which has been accused of deploying attack drones in the past. The Mercer Street is managed by Zodiac Maritime, a London-based company owned by an Israeli billionaire. Those killed included a British national and a Romanian citizen, the company said. Hostilities over the past two years between Israel and Iran have frequently played out at sea, in tit-for-tat attacks by both countries on oil tankers, private commercial vessels or warships—a conflict often referred to as part of a “shadow war” that feels increasingly overt. The strike on the Mercer, off the coast of Oman, marked a significant escalation and was the first time fatalities had resulted from one of the recent attacks.

Food insecurity (Foreign Policy) Ethiopia’s Tigray region, southern Madagascar, Yemen, South Sudan, and northern Nigeria, were all named by both the U.N. World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization as the most at risk of “catastrophic” food insecurity in the next three months. Six countries have been added to the list of “hunger hotspots” since the two agencies last assessed global hunger in March: Chad, Colombia, Kenya, Myanmar, Nicaragua, and North Korea.

Survivalists (NBC News) Americans worried about climate change are flocking to survivalist schools and taking urban-disaster preparedness courses. Once the domain of campers and hunters, survivalist schools across the country are busily instructing young families and urbanites in skills they can use if faced with wildfires, droughts, and destructive storms increasingly brought about by Earth’s rising temperatures. Whether or not one thinks that training to survive in the wilderness is the best way to prepare for the looming crisis, it’s likely that periodic disasters will force many city dwellers to at least temporarily evacuate their homes, which is why urban-preparedness courses at survival school are particularly popular. Tony Nester is head instructor at Ancient Pathways, which teaches desert and wilderness survival in Arizona and Colorado. “We talk about it. What plans do you have in place? How do I get my family evacuated? Where do we go? What supplies should we have with us? How do we get out of our house in 15 minutes? How do we get across town to get to our kids? We’re discussing those issues more and more.”