Could Russia launch an air assault raid over Ukraine to seize strategic airfields, ambush high-value command centers, or clear an arrival path for advancing armored vehicles?

Such an effort may or not be entirely feasible, depending upon the state of Ukrainian weapons,air defenses,or ability to counter approaching Russian helicopters from the. Nonetheless, Russia seeks to be prepared for the contingency, which is why it hasplannedlarge-scale paratrooper air assault drills over Crimea in the coming weeks, according to Russias TASSNews Agency.

Quoting Russias Defence Ministry,TASS saidexercises will include live-firings by air assault and artillery units, mine-clearing missions, and shielding personnel from attacks by aircraft and drones.

During the drills, the paratroopers will also practice air assault operations aboard helicopters to seal off a captured area and provide for a quick advance of the main forces, which will be carried out with the fire support of army aviation (Mi-35 gunships), the paper says.

Advancing helicopters, planes, and gunships filled with paratroopers may or may not be realistic for Russian forces potentially seeking to establish a point of entry for attacking forces.

Despite its status as a major global military power in possession of fifth-generation aircraft and a large, trained land force, Russia could likely encounter some difficulty should it seek to invade Ukraine with an air assault. Ukraine is by no means a majorworldpowerbut does have a substantial force capable of causing serious problems for attacking Russian forces. A look atGlobal Firepowersays Ukraine operates as many as 2,430 tanks and as many as 11,000 armored vehicles and 2,000 pieces of towed artillery.

When it comes to establishing air superiority, Russia would likely have the advantage. That'sunless Ukraine were to be defended by NATO and U.S. F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jets. Ukraine is reported to only operate about twenty-fivefighter jets and likely does not have any fifth-generation fighters capable of challenging stealthy Russian Su-57 fifth-generation fighter jets.

Ukrainian ground forces, however, might at least have some initial success in fending off aRussian armored attackgiven that they have a sizeable fleet of armored vehicles and several thousand tanks. Russia could invade with reportedly superior T-14 Armata tanks, yet it is not clear how many of these tanks Russia operates, so the bulk of anattack forcewould likely consist of upgraded T-90 and T-72 tanks. Without Close Air Support or established air supremacy, Russian tanks and armored forces might have trouble breaking through Ukrainian defenses.

Kris Osborn is the defense editor for theNational Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the ArmyAcquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a masters degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Flickr/NATO

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When It Comes to Air Assault, Ukraine Could Give Russia a Run for Its Money - The National Interest

The Saints are expected to start rookie quarterback Ian Book on Monday vs. the Dolphins. Quarterbacks Trevor Siemian and Taysom Hill were placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list on Thursday, clearing the way for Book, a Notre Dame product who has not yet played a snap in the NFL.

On Thursday, the team placed tackle Jordan Mills, defensive tackle Christian Ringo, cornerback Malcolm Jenkins, defensive end Jalyn Holmes, safety Jeff Heath, linebacker Kaden Elliss and guard James Carpenter on the reserve/COVID-19 list. Friday, tackle Ryan Ramczyk, linebacker Demario Davis, running back Dwayne Washington, safety J.T. Gray, assistant defensive backs coach Cory Robinson, assistant offensive line coach Zach Strief and coaching intern Sterling Moore all were added to the list.

Saints head coach Sean Payton is in the leagues COVID-19 protocols after testing positive for the virus last week. He missed New Orleans 9-0 shutout victory over the Buccaneers Sunday night. Saints tight ends Adam Trautman and Juwan Johnson also were placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list earlier this week.

New Orleans is 7-7 with three games remaining: the Dolphins, Panthers and Falcons round out the schedule.

(Photo: Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)

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Saints expected to start QB Ian Book vs. Dolphins as Taysom Hill, Trevor Siemian land on reserve/COVID-19 list - The Athletic

Cropland-mapping extent and time intervals

The global boundaries for the cropland mapping were informed by the US Geological Survey (USGS) Global Food Security-Support Analysis Data at 30m (GFSAD)11. The cropland mapping extent was defined using the geographic 11 grid. We included every 11 grid cell that contains cropland area according to the GFSAD. Small islands were excluded due to the absence of Landsat geometrically corrected data (Supplementary Fig. 1).

The cropland mapping was performed at 4-year intervals (20002003, 20042007, 20082011, 20122015 and 20162019). Use of a long interval (rather than a single year) increased the number of clear-sky satellite observations in the time-series, which improves representation of land-surface phenology and the accuracy of cropland detection. For each 4-year interval, we mapped an area as cropland if a growing crop was detected during any of these years. In this way, we implemented the criterion of the maximum fallow length: if an area was not used as cropland for >4 years, it was not included in the cropland map for the corresponding time interval.

We employed the global 16-day normalized surface reflectance Landsat Analysis Ready Data (Landsat ARD19) as input data for cropland mapping. The Landsat ARD were generated from the entire Landsat archive from 1997 to 2019. The Landsat top-of-atmosphere reflectance was normalized using globally consistent MODIS surface reflectance as a normalization target. Individual Landsat images were aggregated into 16-day composites by prioritizing clear-sky observations.

For each 4-year interval, we created a single annualized gap-free 16-day observation time-series. For each 16-day interval, we selected the observation with the highest near-infrared reflectance value (to prioritize observations with the highest vegetation cover) from 4years of Landsat data. Observations contaminated by haze, clouds and cloud shadows, as indicated by the Landsat ARD quality layer, were removed from the analysis. If no clear-sky data were available for a 16-day interval, we filled the missing reflectance values using linear interpolation.

The annualized, 16-day time-series within each 4-year interval were transformed into a set of multitemporal metrics that provide consistent land-surface phenology inputs for global cropland mapping. Metrics include selected ranks, inter-rank averages and amplitudes of surface reflectance and vegetation index values, and surface reflectance averages for selected land-surface phenology stages defined by vegetation indices (that is, surface reflectance for the maximum and minimum greenness periods). The multitemporal metrics methodology is provided in detail19,38. The Landsat metrics were augmented with elevation data39. In this way, we created spatially consistent inputs for each of the 4-year intervals. The complete list of input metrics is presented in Supplementary Table 1.

Global cropland mapping included three stages that enabled extrapolation of visually delineated cropland training data to a temporally consistent, global cropland map time-series using machine learning. At all three stages, we employed bagged decision tree ensembles40 as a supervised classification algorithm that used class presence and absence data as the dependent variables, and a set of multitemporal metrics as independent variables at a Landsat ARD pixel scale. The bagged decision tree results in a per-pixel cropland probability layer, which has a threshold of 0.5 to obtain a cropland map.

The first stage consisted of performing individual cropland classifications for a set of 924 Landsat ARD 11 tiles for the 20162019 interval (Supplementary Fig. 1). The tiles were chosen to represent diverse global agriculture landscapes. Classification training data (cropland class presence and absence) were manually selected through visual interpretation of Landsat metric composites and high-resolution data from Google Earth. An individual supervised classification model (bagged decision trees) was calibrated and applied to each tile.

At the second stage, we used the 924 tiles that had been classified as cropland/other land and the 20162019 metric set to train a series of regional cropland mapping models. The classification was iterated by adding training tiles and assessing the results until the resulting map was satisfactory. We then applied the regional models to each of the preceding 4-year intervals, thus creating a preliminary time-series of global cropland maps.

At the third stage, we used the preliminary global cropland maps as training data to generate temporally consistent global cropland data. As the regional models applied at the second stage were calibrated using 20162019 data alone, classification errors may arise due to Landsat data inconsistencies before 2016. The goal of this third stage was to create a robust spatiotemporally consistent set of locally calibrated cropland detection models. For each 11 Landsat ARD tile (13,451 tiles total), we collected training data for each 4-year interval from the preliminary cropland extent maps within a 3 radius of the target tile, with preference to select stable cropland and non-cropland pixels as training. Training data from all intervals were used to calibrate a single decision tree ensemble for each ARD tile. The per-tile models were then applied to each time interval, and the results were post-processed to remove single cropland class detections and omissions within time-series and eliminate cropland patches <0.5ha. Manual masks to remove map artefacts (for example, cropland overestimation over temperate wetlands and flooded grasslands) were applied in some regions to improve the map quality. The final global cropland map time-series are available at https://glad.umd.edu/dataset/croplands.

The sample analysis had two objectives: to estimate cropland area and its associated uncertainty and to assess cropland map accuracy. Sample interpretation and sample-based analysis were done only for the start (2003) and the end (2019) of the cropland-mapping interval. Accuracies of intermediate cropland maps (2007, 2011 and 2015) were not assessed, but were considered to be similar to those of the 2003 and 2019 maps due to implementation of the same classification model and consistently processed Landsat data41. The analysis was performed separately for each of the seven regions outlined in Extended Data Fig. 1, as well as globally. The regional boundaries were aligned with national boundaries to enable comparison with national data. Only land pixels were considered; pixels labelled as permanent water and snow/ice in the Landsat ARD data quality layer were excluded. In each region, we selected five strata based on the map time-series corresponding to stable croplands, cropland gain and loss, possible cropland omission area and other lands (Supplementary Tables 2 and 3). The possible cropland omission stratum (stratum 4) includes areas where omission errors are probable, specifically pixels that were not mapped as cropland and either (1) were identified as crops by the GFSAD11 or (2) had the decision tree-based cropland probability between 0.1 and 0.5. We randomly selected 100 sample units (Landsat data pixels) from each stratum (500 samples pixels per region, 3,500 in total).

Sample interpretation was performed visually using available remotely sensed data time-series, including Landsat ARD 16-day data, composites of selected multitemporal metrics and high-resolution images provided by Google Earth (Supplementary Fig. 2). Each sample pixel was interpreted by two experts independently and the disagreements were discussed and resolved by the research team. The interpretation legend includes the 20032019 cropland dynamics categories and land-use transition types. The sample reference data and interpretation results are available at https://glad.umd.edu/dataset/croplands.

The sample-based area estimation was performed following previously published methods42,43. The 2003 and 2019 total cropland area, stable crops, gross cropland loss and gain, and net change were estimated within each region separately, and for the entire world using equation (1). The area and the total number of Landsat pixels for each region and each stratum are provided in Supplementary Table 3. For each of the 100 sample pixels sampled in each stratum, pu was defined by class presence, for example, for 2003 cropland, pu=0 (2003 cropland absence) or pu=1 (2003 cropland presence). The pu was defined similarly for the 2019 cropland, stable crop, gross cropland loss and gain classes. For the net cropland area change, pu had values of 1 (cropland gain), 1 (cropland loss) and 0 (no change).

$$hat A = mathop {sum}nolimits_{h = 1}^H {A_hbar p_h}$$

(1)

where (hat A) is the estimated cropland/cropland change area,

Ah the area of stratum h,

H the number of sampling strata,

(bar p_h = frac{{mathop {sum }nolimits_{u in h} p_u}}{{n_h}})the mean cropland/cropland change proportion of samples in stratum h; and

nh the sample size (number of sample pixels) in stratum h.

The s.e.m. of the area was estimated from the variances of cropland (or cropland dynamics category) class values of pu for sample pixels in each stratum using equation (2). The 95% CI was obtained by multiplying s.e.m. by 1.96:

$${mathrm{s.e.}}left( {hat A} right) = sqrt {mathop {sum }limits_{h = 1}^H A_h^2left( {1 - frac{{n_h}}{{N_h}}} right)frac{{s_{ph}^2}}{{n_h}}}$$

(2)

where ({mathrm{s.e.}}left( {hat A} right)) is the s.e.m. of cropland/cropland change class area and

(s_{ph}^2 = frac{{mathop {sum }nolimits_{u in h} left( {p_u - bar p_h} right)^2}}{{n_h - 1}}) the sample variance for stratum h.

We analysed the land-use trajectories of cropland loss and gain using reference sample data within cropland gain and loss strata only. Inclusion of sample pixels from other strata where cropland change was detected would have inflated the area of land-use trajectories that these pixels represent (that is, if a sample pixel from a stable cropland stratum was interpreted as cropland gain due to forest clearing, including the proportion of forest clearing from this large stratum, it will dominate the total regional estimate). The proportion of each land-use trajectory (within cropland gain and loss separately) was estimated from the sample and reported as the percentage of the total gain or loss along with its s.e.m. (Table 2). A combined ratio estimator for stratified random sampling43 was employed to estimate the percentages (equation (3)).

$$hat R = frac{{mathop {sum }nolimits_{h = 1}^H A_hbar y_h}}{{mathop {sum }nolimits_{h = 1}^H A_hbar x_h}} times 100$$

(3)

where: (hat R) is the estimated class proportion expressed as a percentage;

H the number of sampling strata;

Ah the area of stratum h;

(bar y_h = frac{{mathop {sum}nolimits_{u in h} {y_u} }}{{n_h}}) the sample mean of the yu values in stratum h, where yu=1 if pixel u is classified as belonging to a specific transition in the reference sample interpretation, and yu=0 otherwise; and

(bar x_h = frac{{mathop {sum}nolimits_{u in h} {x_u} }}{{n_h}}) the sample mean of the xu values in stratum h, where xu=1 if pixel u is classified as any cropland loss/gain in the reference sample interpretation, and xu=0 otherwise.

The s.e.m. of the estimated ratio of class proportion expressed as percentage was calculated using equation (4):

$${mathrm{s.e.}}left( {hat R} right) = sqrt {frac{1}{{hat X^2}}mathop {sum }limits_{h = 1}^H A_h^2left( {1 - frac{{n_h}}{{N_h}}} right)left( {s_{yh}^2 + hat R^2s_{xh}^2 - 2hat Rs_{xyh}} right)/n_h} times 100$$

(4)

where: ({mathrm{s.e.}}left( {hat R} right)) is the s.e.m. of the estimated proportion expressed as a percentage;

Nh the total number of pixels in stratum h;

nh number of sample pixels in stratum h;

(hat X = mathop {sum }limits_{h = 1}^H A_hbar x_h) the estimated total area of cropland loss/gain expressed in area units; and

(s_{yh}^2) and (s_{xh}^2) the sample variances in stratum h; and sxyh the sample covariance in stratum h estimated as follows:

$$s_{yh}^2 = mathop {sum}nolimits_{u in } {left( {y_u - bar y_h} right)^2/left( {n_h - 1} right)}$$

$$s_{xh}^2 = mathop {sum}nolimits_{u in h} {left( {x_u - bar x_h} right)^2/left( {n_h - 1} right)}$$

$$s_{xyh} = mathop {sum}nolimits_{u in h} {left( {y_u - bar y_h} right)} left( {x_u - bar x_h} right)/left( {n_h - 1} right).$$

The map accuracy metrics include overall accuracy (the proportion of correctly mapped sample pixels), users accuracy of the cropland class (which reflects the cropland class commission) and producers accuracy of the cropland class (which reflects the cropland class omission)42. All accuracy metrics and respective s.e.m.s are presented as percentages (Table 3).

To estimate overall accuracy, we defined yu=1 if pixel u is classified correctly and yu=0 if pixel u is classified incorrectly. The estimator for overall accuracy is then expressed by equation (5), and s.e.m. for overall accuracy is computed using equation (6).

$$hat O = frac{{mathop {sum }nolimits_{h = 1}^H N_hbar y_h}}{N} times 100$$

(5)

where: (hat O) is the estimated overall accuracy, expressed as a percentage; H the number of sampling strata; Nh the total number of pixels in stratum h; N the total number of pixels in the reporting region; and (bar y_h = mathop {sum }limits_{u in h} y_u/n_h) the sample mean of the yu values in stratum h.

$${mathrm{s.e.}}left( {hat O} right) = sqrt {frac{1}{{N^2}}mathop {sum}nolimits_{h = 1}^H {N_h^2left( {1 - n_h/N_h} right)s_{yh}^2/n_h} } times 100$$

(6)

where ({mathrm{s.e.}}left( {hat O} right)) is the s.e.m. of the overall accuracy, expressed as percentage; nh the number of sample pixels in stratum h; and (s_{yh}^2) the sample variance: (s_{yh}^2 = mathop {sum }limits_{u in h} left( {y_u - bar y_h} right)^2/(n_h - 1).) For estimating users accuracy of the croplands class, we defined yu=1 if sample pixel u is correctly mapped as cropland, otherwise yu=0, and xu=1 if sample pixel u is mapped cropland, otherwise xu=0. For the producers accuracy, we defined yu=1 if sample pixel u is correctly mapped as cropland, otherwise yu=0, and xu=1 if sample pixel u is interpreted as cropland, otherwise xu=0. The estimator of the users accuracy and producers accuracy was then expressed as a ratio estimator (equation (7)) and their s.e.m. calculated using equation (8), which are similar to equations (3) and (4), except that the strata were weighted by their total number of pixels (Nh) rather than the areas (Ah) for the purposes of map accuracy assessment (with pixel being the primary mapping unit):

$$hat R = frac{{mathop {sum }nolimits_{h = 1}^H N_hbar y_h}}{{mathop {sum }nolimits_{h = 1}^H N_hbar x_h}} times 100$$

(7)

where (hat R) is the estimated users/producers accuracy, expressed as a percentage.

$${mathrm{s.e.}}left( {hat R} right) = sqrt {frac{1}{{hat X^2}}mathop {sum }limits_{h = 1}^H N_h^2left( {1 - frac{{n_h}}{{N_h}}} right)left( {s_{yh}^2 + hat R^2s_{xh}^2 - 2hat Rs_{xyh}} right)/n_h} times 100$$

(8)

where ({mathrm{s.e.}}left( {hat R} right)) is the s.e.m. of the estimated users/producers accuracy, expressed as a percentage.

(hat X = mathop {sum }limits_{h = 1}^H N_hbar x_h.)

The cropland NPP was evaluated using the globally consistent Collection 6 MODIS-based, annual year-end gap-filled NPP product (MOD17A3HGF20). The product provides the sum of total daily NPP through the year at a 500-m spatial resolution (kgCm2year1). The annual NPP data were resampled to our Landsat ARD data grid and were overlaid with the corresponding 4-year cropland maps to calculate total and per-unit area NPP for each region and each year. We used average annual NPP for each 4-year interval, except for the 20002003 interval, where a 3-year average was used instead to avoid using the year 2000 when MODIS data were incomplete. The s.d. of the annual estimates is provided as an uncertainty metric.

For the national cropland area analysis, we used public geographic information systems (GIS) country boundaries from GADM (https://gadm.org).

We employed the 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects21 to calculate global, regional and national population for years 2003 and 2019. As the boundaries of analysis regions (Extended Data Fig. 1) are aligned with country boundaries, we were able to summarize the regional population totals from national data. The population data were related to our sample-based (for global and regional estimates) and map-based (for national estimates) cropland area to estimate per-capita cropland area and change. Similarly, we related regional cropland NPP to population data to estimate per-capita cropland NPP for 2003 and 2019.

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

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Global maps of cropland extent and change show accelerated cropland expansion in the twenty-first century - Nature.com

From Gulf countries lifting the Qatar blockade to the bombing of Gaza and a coup in Sudan, these were some of the moments that shaped the Middle East.

Since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, tensions escalated across the Middle East not only between pro-democracy citizens and autocratic governments but also between states like Iran and the Saudi-UAE bloc.

This year, tensions have not significantly deescalated in the turbulent region, but at the same time, some positive trends have taken place in the Gulf where the Saudi-UAE bloc ended their blockade against Qatar.

Normalisation between Qatar and other Gulf powers also helped promote diplomacy between Tehran and Riyadh whose interests clash across the region from Yemen to Iraq and Lebanon.

Increasing diplomacy also led to other normalisation efforts between Turkiye and Egypt as the two countries beganan official rapprochement process in May. In November, Ankara and Abu Dhabi also decidedto normalise relations after ties worsened following the failed July 15 coup against the Erdogan government in 2016.

But in Palestine, nothing improved as Israel continued to increase its aggression against Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem to Gaza, launching a brutal aerial campaign against the Hamas-led enclave.

Here is an overview of what happened across the region in 2021.

Gulf normalisation

On January 5, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, the UAE and Bahrain alongside Egypt, signed an agreement with Qatar in Al Ula, normalising relations with Doha.

The normalising effort seemed to have been pushed by the former Trump administration, which was also instrumental in enacting the Abraham Accords between the UAE, Bahrain and Israel in late 2020.

In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a full blockade over Qatar, due to the countrys close ties with Iran and its support for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) movement. Both Iran and the MB are forces the Saudi-UAE alliance see as threats to their rule and they demanded Qatar to distance itself from both.

The blockade ensured no tangible benefits for the quartet as Qatar continued to receive support from its allies like Turkiye and the US.

Sheikh Jarrah protests & Israeli war on Gaza

Israeli expulsions of Palestinian residents from Sheikh Jarrah a neighbourhood which has existed for more than nine centuries in occupied East Jerusalem was the trigger for another round of tensions.

In May, based on an Israeli court decision, Israeli authorities raided Palestinian homes and faced fierce resistance from both native residents and their supporters. The confrontation led to months of protests across Palestine from Jerusalem to the West Bank and finally Gaza.

This time around, though, Palestinians were not alone. Many people across the globe from the US to Western Europe rose to oppose the Israeli expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah, supporting the Palestinian cause.

The Sheikh Jarrah standoff also spread to Gaza, which has long been under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade. The Hamas-led enclave launched hundreds of rockets to Israeli cities as far as Tel Aviv leading the Israelis to respond with heavy bombardment from both land and air, leading to hundreds of casualties.

At least 256 Palestinians including 66 children were killed due to Israels military campaign as tens of thousands were displaced to other regions. More than 1,900 Palestinians were injured. 13 Israelis killed and 200 Israelis were injured according to Tel Aviv.

After 15 days of fighting, Israel with itsobvious military superiority, halted its attacks under enormous international pressure.

Iranian hardliners won

This year also witnessed a lot of soul-searching in Iran.

Under reformist leadership over the last decade, Tehran reached an agreement with the US and other major powers on its nuclear programme in 2015. But in 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the deal, leaving the fate of the nuclear deal in the lurch.

The US pull-out weakened Iranian reformists giving a boost to hardliners who long thought that the deal was an unnecessary appeasement to the West.

In June, Irans hardliners claimed a landslide victory in presidential elections thanks to both the US withdrawal from the deal and the election committees disqualification of many reformist candidates.

Even under hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, Iran returned to nuclear deal negotiations in Vienna after the new Biden administration expressed its willingness to restore the landmark agreement. But things are not exactly going smoothly in the Austrian capital so far.

Netanyahu is gone

In 2021, another crucial development happened in Israeli politics: Israels longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, exited from his post after unprecedented four back-to-back inconclusive elections.

Netanyahu, a hardliner, faces various corruption charges, even seeing an indictment in early 2020 - but never showed the willingness to quit his job.

After the latest elections in March, Naftali Bennett, Netanyahus former ally, who is also another hardliner, was ableto bring together different forcesfrom far-left to far-right to form an unlikely coalition, ousting the Likud leader.

While he is gone, many still believe that his hardliner views continue to control the Israeli state.

Sudan coup

In October, another coup ousted Sudans interim government, which was in place after the countrys 2019 revolution, which brought an end to Omar al Bashirs longtime dictatorial rule.

Abdel Fattah al Burhan, the countrys top general, who also happens to be a protege of the jailed Bashir,launched a coup against Abdalla Hamdoks civilian government, established after a deal between military leaders and protesting forces in August 2019.

But generals have faced fierce opposition on the streets. Burhan, who was under strong international pressure, approached Hamdok, the man he ousted with his coup, to bring him back to power.

After the initial refusal, Hamdok, who is strongly backed by the Western alliance, decided to accept Burhans offer, signing an agreement with him, laying out a kind of unclear path from military rule to democracy. The deal appeared to favour the militarys positions, but it also promised to release all political prisoners jailed after the October coup.

After the initial refusal, Hamdok, who is strongly backed by the Western alliance, decided to accept Burhans offer, signing an agreement with him, laying out a kind of unclear path from military rule to democracy. The deal appeared to favour the militarys positions, but it also promised to release all political prisoners jailed after the October coup.

But Sudans anti-military civilian leadership opposed the Hamdok-Burhan deal, continuing to protest across streets, showing an unseen resilience to move the country toward a democratic rule. Most recently, Hamdok has signalled that he may step down.

Turkiye-UAE normalisation

Toward the end of the year, a surprising development took place between Turkiye and the UAE. Prior to the July 15 coup attempt, relations between the two states were warm, but after the coup attempt, whose perpetrators appeared to have links with Abu Dhabi, ties hit rock bottom. But thats not where the tensions end - Turkiye and the UAE have been on opposing sides in Libya and Ankara also backed Qatar against the Saudi-UAE-led blockade.

Despite continuing tensions on various issues, the two states decided to findcommon ground to normalise relations last month after seeing de-escalation across the Gulf after the end of the blockade. Turkiye and Egypt, a UAE ally, also launched a process to normalise relations, apparently boosting the rapprochement between Ankara and Abu Dhabi.

In November, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, leading to the announcement of a $10 billion fund for investments in Turkey including several agreements to boost cooperation across sectors like energy and health.

Delayed Libya elections

The latest major development from the region came when Libya's election commission decided to delay the countrys long-awaited elections due to the inadequate preparation for holding polls.

The elections were delayed for at least a month, but there is no official announcement clearing its schedule yet. The polls are aimed at addressing the countrys brutal civil war and leadership disagreements through a free and fair vote. But continuing tensions suggest that it will be an uphill task.

After years of fierce fighting between the UN-backed Tripoli government and warlord Khalifa Haftars forces, both sides agreed in March to establish a unity government, which will theoretically oversee the elections and transition to a democratic rule.

Source: TRT World

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The moments that defined the Middle East in 2021 - TRT World

Dinosaur and fossil aficionados are intimately familiar with the meteorite strike that drove Tyrannosaurus rex and all nonavian dinosaurs to extinction around 66 million years ago. But it is often overlooked that the impact also wiped out entire ecosystems. A new study shows how those casualties, in turn, led to another particularly profound evolutionary outcome: the emergence of the Amazon rain forest of South America, the most spectacularly diverse environment on the planet. Yet the Amazons bounty of tropical species and habitats now face their own existential threat because of unprecedented destruction from human activity, including land clearing for agriculture.

The new study, published on Thursday in Science, analyzed tens of thousands of plant fossils and represents a fundamental advance in knowledge, says Peter Wilf, a geoscientist at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the research. The authors demonstrate that the dinosaur extinction was also a massive reset event for neotropical ecosystems, putting their evolution on an entirely new path leading directly to the extraordinary, diverse, spectacular and gravely threatened rain forests in the region today.

These insights, Wilf adds, provide new impetus for the conservation of the living evolutionary heritage in the tropics that supports human life, along with millions of living species.

Carlos Jaramillo, a paleobiologist at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and co-lead author of the study, agrees that the meteorites evolutionary and ecological effects hold implications for todays rapid, human-caused destruction of the Amazon rain forest and other key habitats across the planet. We can relate this to nowadays, he says, because were also transforming landscapes, and that lasts foreveror at least a very long time.

Modern-day rain forests are integral to life on Earth. The Amazon, in particular, plays a crucial role in regulating the planets freshwater cycle and climate. Yet Western European and North American paleontologists have paid little attention to tropical forests, focusing instead on temperate latitudes. Many academic and amateur fossil hunters have also tended to write off warm, wet locales as a lost cause for finds because they have assumed that conditions there would prevent organic materials from being preserved long enough to fossilize. Its this combination of factors that has led us to this absence of much data in the tropics, says Bonnie Jacobs, a paleobiologist at Southern Methodist University, who co-authored a contextualizing essay that was published with the new study in Science.

Scientists already knew that the effects of the meteorite collision and its aftermathat least in temperate zonesvaried with local conditions and distance from the Chicxulub impact crater in Mexicos Yucatn Peninsula. New Zealand forests, for example, escaped relatively unscathed. But researchers have had no idea how the event changed the tropical rain forests of Africa or, until now, those of South America.

Along with most of his co-authors, Jaramillo is from Colombia and specifically wanted to investigate the origins of his home countrys tropical forests. The new study, which he conceptualized as an undergraduate student, represents nearly 12 years of effort. It took us a long time, he says, because we had to start from zero.

Whole trees are almost never preserved in the fossil record, so Jaramillo and his colleagues turned to fossilized pollen and leaves for insights. Pollen preserves well over time and is widespread in the fossil record. Like leaves, it differs morphologically among species, which helps researchers determine what types of plants lived in an ancient habitat.

Jaramillo and his colleagues searched 53 sites across Colombia for rocks that formed during the Late Cretaceous period, just before the meteorite strike, and others that formed during 10 million subsequent years, in the Paleogene period. From these rocks, the team amassed and analyzed around 50,000 fossil pollen grains and 6,000 fossil leaves to characterize the types of plants that made them. Recent separate findings indicate that plant leaves receiving more light have a higher density of veins, as well as a higher ratio of a naturally occurring isotope called carbon 13. The researchers studied those features among the collected fossils to piece together the structure of the regions past forests.

Their findings paint a picture of a sudden, cataclysmic annihilation of life after the impactbut also of a phoenix-like rebirth in the millions of years afterward. Prior to the meteorite, the authors determined, South Americas forests featured many conifers and a brightly lit open canopy supporting a lush understory of ferns. Dinosaurs likely played key roles in maintaining these Cretaceous forests by knocking down trees and clearing out vegetation, among other things. Within moments of the Chicxulub meteorites impact, however, this ecosystem was irrevocably altered. Fires, which likely burned for several years, engulfed South Americas southerly forests. Along with many of the animals they supported, a total of 45 percent of the continents tropical plant species disappeared, according to the authors calculations.

It took six million years for the forests to return to the level of diversity they had before the meteorite, and the species that slowly grew back were completely different than what came before. Legumesplants that form symbiotic relationships with bacteria that allow them to fix nitrogen from the airwere the first to appear, and they enriched the formerly nutrient-poor soil. This influx of nitrogen, along with phosphorus from the meteorites ash, enabled other flowering plants to thrive alongside the legumes and to displace conifers. As flowering species competed for light, they formed dense canopies of leaves and created the layered Amazon rain forest we know today, which is characterized by a blanket of productivity up top and a dark understory at the bottom.

Regan Dunn, a paleoecologist at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, who was not involved in the new study, agrees that its findings are not only key for revealing the past but also for putting current anthropogenic threats into perspective. She particularly notes the authors calculation that 45 percent of plant species went extinct following the meteorite collision, because current estimates suggest that at least this many plant species will be globally threatened in the Amazon basin in the next 30 years from human activities alone.

The question remains: How will human impact change the composition and function of Amazonian forests forever? Dunn says.

The new findings show how extensive mass extinction events can alter the course of everything, Jacobs says. Today we are in the midst of another such event, she adds, but this one is driven by a single speciesand there is no place far from the metaphorical impact crater because humans are ubiquitous.

Yet unlike past mass extinction events, Jacobs says, this time we are not powerless to stop it.

Here is the original post:
The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs Created the Amazon Rain Forest - Scientific American

As the world marks the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action on 04 April 2021, UNIFIL peacekeepers continue to carry on with the painstaking but necessary work of clearing large swathes of south Lebanese lands of deadly mines.

One of them is Captain Yang Dong from China. Recently, he was found hovering a hand-held metal detector a few centimetres above the ground, emanating a high-pitched electronic sound as he gingerly scanned the ground for mines near the village of Labbouneh.

The closer we get to a minefield in the remote areas of south Lebanon, the more red-painted stones we see, he says. The red stones remind us between safe and unsafe areas. It is reminding us not to step around It is dangerous and there could be some mines there.

Another deminer from China, Senior Sergeant Lu Nianyou, explains the procedure of detecting a mine: A steady beeping means all is fine, terrain is safe. But when beeping increases in frequency and becomes louder than the usual, it is a clear signal not to move any further.

In a nearby field close to the Blue Line, another group of UNIFIL deminers, from Cambodia, is busy undertaking the same task.

Team leader Chief Warrant Officer Ith Seyla says he feels very proud to be clearing the land of mines so that the landowners can till the land for farming.

If we clear all the mines, they can do farming in this area, he says.

His colleague, Warrant Officer Bun Channa of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF), is equally proud. I feel very happy in this job as a deminer because its humanitarian work, she adds. Its good to be serving my own country as well as Lebanon.

In 2020 alone, UNIFILs Chinese and Cambodian deminers cleared 14,541 square metres of land and discovered and destroyed 1,348 anti-personnel mines.

Since 2006, UNIFIL deminers have cleared nearly 5 million square metres of mine-filled land in south Lebanon. They have also destroyed more than 43,500 mines, bombs and unexploded ordnances.

During the first four years, UNIFIL deminers (which also included Italian, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish, Ukrainian and Finnish peacekeepers) conducted humanitarian demining in order to protect civilians and facilitate safe access to dwellings and agricultural land. As part of its mandate, UNIFIL facilitates the marking of the Blue Line. To ensure the safety of patrols carried out by UNIFIL peacekeepers, demining activities focused on specific operational tasks clearing access pathways to the Blue Line.

However, their scope of work increased again in January 2020 with the signing of a new agreement between UNIFIL and the Lebanon Mine Action Centre (LMAC) of the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Calling for continued efforts by Member States to foster the establishment and development of national mine-action capacities, the UN General Assembly declared on 8 December 2005 that 4 April of each year shall be observed as the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.

The global theme of this years observance isPerseverance, Partnership, Progressperseveranceneeded during the COVID-19 pandemic, newpartnershipsneeded to mitigate the threat of improvised explosive devices, withprogresstowardsa world free from the threat of landmines and unexploded ordnances.

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UNIFIL deminers persevere with clearing south Lebanese land of deadly mines | UNIFIL - UNIFIL

Its set to be a big 2021-22 fiscal year for the Alcoa/Maryville/Blount County Sanitary Landfill, which is in the early stages of expanding its more than 250-acre footprint and increasing per-ton tipping fees by mid-summer of next year.

Landfill and city of Alcoa officials said expansion of its Class III material cells nonhazardous industrial, commercial, landscaping, land clearing and farming wastes could take until at least February 2022.

Meanwhile, they said tipping fees to dump 1 ton of waste at the site will rise from $50 to $52 on July 1, this following a busy fiscal 2020 and sharp increases in trash drop-offs during the heat of COVID-19 restrictions.

Alcoa Public Works and Engineering Director Shane Snoderly said increased rates track with inflation. Weve held off the last few years, he said. We actually probably should be a little higher than what we are, but thats just kind of playing some catch-up.

As rates rise, so will the amount of space at the landfill. Operations there are finally realizing the fruit of planning that lasted several years, officials said.

Expanding for Class III materials is important to the landfill, where crews recently tore down the decades-old cabin staff used as an office tucked in a hilly, wooded area in the southwestern portion to make room for 11 more acres of Class III waste cells.

But before that happens, the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation has to give the permitting green light.

That could take until February 2022, according to Solid Waste Manager Kelly Hembree, though she hopes sooner. She also explained a single-permit expansion plan leaders initially created recently was split in two on TDECs recommendation.

What weve decided to do is to break it into two projects, Hembree said. The overlay project were doing first because were kind of in a hurry, and the other project is where the old office used to be.

Snoderly explained doing overlay strategically layering material on top of already existing cells is a lot easier to get permitted and get underway.

Launching these projects comes not a moment too soon for the landfill, Hembree added. Were currently on the last lift (or layer) of the current demolition cell, she said, explaining leaders already are using space designated for Class I materials to store Class III materials.

Ive put all the commercial construction demolition waste ... into the current Class I cell, and we dont want to do that, Hembree explained.

Having more cells by 2022 will mean less scraping for space, at least for the better part of another century, which is how long some officials estimate it will last.

Blount Countians may be able to help extend that time, however.

Hembree encouraged residents to find another use for things they throw away.

The only thing that really bothers me is a lot of things people haul off they could donate somewhere. You see a lot of good things that could have been used had it been taken to like a Habitat ReStore or AMVETS or somewhere like that, she said, noting the adage reduce, reuse, recycle still rings true in Blount.

Snoderly agreed, noting local recycling options are a huge benefit to extending the life of the landfill.

Follow @arjonesreports on Facebook and Twitter for more from city government reporter Andrew Jones.

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Landfill size, tipping rate increasing over coming fiscal year - Maryville Daily Times

April 1, 2021Updated: April 1, 2021 2:42p.m.

After more than 25 years, Fox Sports Southwest is out and Bally Sports is in due to a rebrand.

After more than 25 years, Fox Sports Southwest is out and Bally Sports is in due to a rebrand.

The change affects all 19 regional networks previously owned by Fox Sports. Fox Sports Southwest hasbecome a staple for Spurs fans in San Antonio who would rather enjoy Sean Elliott and Bill Land's play-by-play commentary rather than other sports world figures.

Spurs fans noticed the new look on their social media feeds on Wednesday as the rebrand launched.

RELATED: Patty Mills honored with NBA community award inspired by Spurs legend David Robinson

Other than a new name and graphics, not much will change for the fan experience. According to the website's frequently asked questions, the channel positions will stay the same across all providers.

Elliott, Land and Matt Bonner are all staying onboard. Anchor Ric Renner promoted the new era on Twitter by showing off the new studio.

READ MORE FROM MADALYN: Spurs spill the beans, confirm 'Coffee Gang' merchandise line will launch soon

The Fox Sports GO app automatically updated to the new Bally Sports look with the shakeup reveal on Wednesday. The social media accounts also reflect the change.

First reactions from fans included disapproval of the new scoreboard and requests to offer games on streaming networks such as Hulu.

Bally Sports will broadcast Thursday night's Spurs game against the Atlanta Hawks. Tipoff is at 7:30 p.m.

Madalyn Mendoza is a proud Alamo City native. Keep up with her work and puro San Antonio happenings on Twitter, @MaddySkye.

Continued here:
Here's how Bally Sports' takeover of Fox Sports Southwest affects Spurs fans - mySA

A local nonprofit is looking to establish multi-modal paths around Boone, allowing residents to get around town without a vehicle.

Harmony Lanes was established in 2019 to create safe, inclusive, multi-modal transportation opportunities according to its website. Its biggest project yet, the East Boone Connector, was approved by the North Carolina Department of Transportation in the fall of 2019 and should be finished in the next three years.

We started up to advocate and push the town and the county and the university to think in terms of sustainability and quality of life for the people who live here, including students and locals, and try to make some smarter decisions in the infrastructure planning as we go forward, Harmony Lanes founder Dave Freireich said.

The East Boone Connector, part of a $9 million project, will run along Bamboo Road from US 421 to the Wilson Ridge Road intersection. The path will be protected from the road with a curb and a 3-foot patch of grass.

Having no shoulder lane or sidewalk right now, Freireich said this 10-foot path will help people safely get to the Hospitality House, the Community Care Clinic and many businesses. But it will also help people driving cars, he said.

If were getting cars off the road, because a lot of people will choose to use these systems, then were helping you too, Freireich said.

Freireich spoke about other towns and cities that have implemented this infrastructure and the success they have had.

Asheville recently converted a three-lane road into a two-lane road with a center turn lane and bicycle lanes on each side. This transformation resulted in a decrease in traffic and an increase in bicycle ridership. Even with 20,000 vehicles a day on this one street, travel times went down.

Shaw Brown, owner of Boone Bike, said that as Boone has grown, getting around on a bike has become harder.

Theres big voids, Brown said. Maybe theres a safe two miles and then theres an unsafe half mile. And then its safe again.

Brown, who has lived in Boone for 30 years, sponsored Harmony Lanes in the past and said they are bringing light a problem that has been here forever.

The Town of Boone has worked on several similar projects in the past, former town council member Lynne Mason said, but theres still a little work to do.

Mason, who stepped down from the council in 2019, said she was a fierce advocate for this type of work during her 19 years as town council member and is glad Harmony Lanes is implementing these new forms of transportation, emphasizing her appreciation for citizen groups.

I loved community engagement when I was on council and different groups being champions for different issues, Mason said. Theyve done an absolutely amazing job in creating this awareness.

The East Boone Connector also has environmental benefits, Freireich said.

Freireich, a 1996 App State graduate, said enrollment at the university has increased from 12,000 to 20,000 since he graduated. With this increase in population, he said people need more environmentally conscious ways to travel.

If were going to reverse the environmental impact of our fossil fueled economy, electric cars and public transportation are a great step forward, Freireich said. But we also need to make it easy and safe for people to get a mile or two to class, work, shopping without needing a car.

Skye-Anne Tschoepe is the hub coordinator of Sunrise Boone, an environmental group working to end anthropogenic climate change. She and Freireich met at the ClimACT Peoples Assembly in January, where their collaboration began.

Tschoepe said the creation of the East Boone Connector in itself will create jobs and then, after construction, benefit the environment because less cars on the road will lead to less greenhouse gas emission.

And also the human health benefits, I mean if we bike or walk instead of driving our cars, the miles add up and were healthier, Tschoepe said.

The East Boone Connector should be completed within three years, according to the Harmony Lanes website. The NCDOT will start land clearing this year and begin construction in 2022.

Harmony Lanes originally needed 30% of the funding from the Town of Boone and Watauga County, but the NCDOT is funding the entire project because it adheres to their Complete Streets policy. This NCDOT policy encourages infrastructure projects in North Carolina to incorporate multiple modes of transportation.

Eventually, Harmony Lanes hopes to create the Cross Boone connector, a multimodal path connecting the end Boone Greenway to App States campus.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated The East Boone Connector project was $9 million. The mistake has been corrected.

Read more:
Nonprofit Harmony Lanes brings inclusive transportation to High Country - The Appalachian Online

Heres what you need to know:

. . . the YM Wish.

Thats the name of the first ship to transit through the Suez Canal almost a week after a colossal cargo vessel navigating the waterway zigged when it should have zagged (though perhaps going straight would have been even better) and wedged itself tight into the side.

The YM Wish is a 1,207-foot-long Hong Kong-flagged container ship, and it exited the canal about 9:15 p.m. headed for the Red Sea and Jeddah.

The vessel may have made it through the Suez Canal without mishap, but it had little reason to gloat, notes our colleague reporting from Egypt, Vivian Yee.

Six years ago, VesselFinder.com reported, the YM Wish ran aground in the Elbe River in Germany. In that case, however, it took less than a day to get the vessel afloat again.

And with that this live briefing will come to a close.

The mammoth cargo ship blocking the Suez Canal was wrenched from the shoreline and finally set free on Monday, raising hopes that one of the worlds most vital maritime routes would quickly rebound and limit the fallout of a disruption that had paralyzed billions of dollars in global trade.

Within hours, other ships awaiting transit through the 120-mile-long waterway that connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas, waylaid for nearly a week, fired up their engines and began moving again.

Salvage teams, working on land and water for six days and nights, were ultimately assisted by forces more powerful than any machine rushed to the scene: the moon and the tides.

The ship, the quarter-mile-long Ever Given, was ultimately set free at around 3 p.m., according to shipping officials. Horns blared in celebration as images emerged on social media of the ship once again on the move.

We pulled it off! Peter Berdowski, chief executive of Royal Boskalis Westminster, a Dutch maritime salvage company hired by the vessels owner, said in a statement.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt celebrated the moment on Twitter, writing that Egyptians have succeeded today in ending the crisis of the stuck ship in the Suez Canal despite the great complexities surrounding this situation in every aspect.

Early Monday, the stern of the Ever Given was clearly free from land, but it was some hours before it was certain that the ships bulbous bow had been successfully pulled from the mud and muck on the banks of the canal.

Salvage crews had worked around a schedule largely dictated by the tides: working to make progress during the six hours it would take for the water to go from low point to high.

A full moon on Sunday gave the salvager an especially promising 24-hour window to work in, with a few extra inches of tidal flow providing a vital assist.

Throughout the night on Sunday and into Monday, tugboats worked in coordination with dredgers to return the 220,000-ton vessel to the water.

Then, just before dawn, the ship slowly regained buoyancy.

It was a turning point in one of the largest and most intense salvage operations in modern history, with the smooth functioning of the global trading system hanging in the balance.

The army of machine operators, engineers, tugboat captains, and other salvage operators knew they were in a race against time. Each day of blockage put global supply chains another day closer to a full-blown crisis.

Vessels packed with the worlds goods including cars, oil, livestock and laptops usually flow through the canal with ease, supplying much of the globe as they traverse the quickest path from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and the East Coast of the United States.

With concerns that the salvage operation could take weeks, some ships decided not to wait, turning to take the long way around the southern tip of Africa, a voyage that can add weeks to the journey and more than $26,000 a day in fuel costs.

Each bit of progress in moving the ship over the weekend was celebrated by the workers on the canal, with tugboat horns blaring and shouts of joy often echoing in the desert dark.

transcript

transcript

[horn blowing]

The company that oversees the ships operations and crew, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, said 11 tugboats had helped, with two joining the struggle on Sunday. Several dredgers, including a specialized suction dredger that can extract 2,000 cubic meters of material per hour, dug around the vessels bow, the company said.

Teams of divers inspected the hull throughout the operation and found no damage, officials said. The ship was to be inspected again after it was freed.

Assisted by a flotilla of tugboats, the ship was towed north to the Great Bitter Lake, the widest part of the canal, so it could be further inspected and so delayed traffic could once gain flow smoothly.

Leth Agencies, a shipping services provider that specializes in canal passages, said on Twitter that with the Ever Given now safely out of the way, 43 other vessels awaiting southbound transit at Great Bitter Lake had resumed their voyages toward the Red Sea end of the canal.

Praising the salvagers who freed the cargo vessel Ever Given six days after it grounded, the head of the Egyptian agency that runs the Suez Canal said Monday night that traffic had resumed in both directions of the crucial maritime passageway.

But Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, put the cost to Egypt of the disruption at between $12 million and $15 million a day, and said an investigation would determine who was responsible for paying it.

The Suez Canal is not at fault, General Rabie told reporters at a news conference in Ismailia, a city at the 120-mile-long canals halfway point. We have been harmed by the incident.

As of 6 p.m. local time less than three hours after the Ever Given was refloated traffic paralyzed by the ship had resumed moving, General Rabie said.

He said the ship had been moved north to the Great Bitter Lake, the widest part of the canal, where inspectors will examine it for possible damage. Thank God, there were no deaths, injuries, or leaks, General Rabie said. All engines are working.

More than 300 ships were prevented from transiting the canal after the Ever Given was beached last week, its quarter-mile length blocking the waterway.

We will work day and night to clear the ships and end the congestion, General Rabie said.

A Taiwanese company operates the quarter-mile-long Ever Given. An Indian crew staffs it. A Panamanian flag flies over it. And Dutch and Egyptian salvagers helped pull it from the shallows of the Suez Canal where the vessel was beached for nearly a week.

But it was Japans largest shipbuilder that constructed the vessel and owns it and will most likely bear the enormous cost of the disruption it caused.

The Ever Given, part of the Taiwanese-based Evergreen Line, is owned by a subsidiary of Imabari Shipbuilder, a private company founded in 1901 and based in Ehime, on Japans southern island of Shikoku. The subsidiary, Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., founded in 1962, has a client base that includes companies in Belgium, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.

Yukito Higaki, the president of Imabari, expressed confidence last Friday that the Ever Given would be refloated by the weekend, a prediction that proved somewhat optimistic.

In an interview with the Ehime Shimbun, a local newspaper, Mr. Higaki also said the subsidiary was likely to bear the cost of salvage and repair.

Those costs have yet to be determined.

But the head of the Suez Canal Authority, which helped oversee the freeing of the vessel, said Egypt had suffered losses of between $12 million and $15 million a day because of the blockage.

The Ever Given is one of 13 container ships constructed from a design by Imabari. The company, facing big competition from rivals in China and South Korea, formed a joint venture with two other Japanese shipbuilders last year.

It does appear to be having a run of bad luck.

A sister megaship of the Ever Given, the Ever Gentle, was damaged in an incident this past weekend in Taipei, according to a report by the Maritime Bulletin, a news service. A crane struck the Ever Gentles funnel, or smokestack, crumpling it.

Despite the damage, the Ever Gentle later departed Taipei for Yantian, China, the report said.

The six days that the Suez Canal was closed to traffic might have seemed endless to the sailors stranded at either end of the passage, but tell that the crews of the so-called Yellow Fleet.

In the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, 14 commercial vessels were marooned in the canal for eight years.

The war, which broke out in June of that year, lasted only six days. But the Egyptian authorities closed the canal and ordered the 14 vessels to anchor in the widest part, known as Great Bitter Lake.

With Egyptian forces on the western side of the canal and Israelis on the eastern side, the waterway essentially became a cease-fire line between two enemy armies.

Time passed, the yellow sands of the desert coated the hulls of the trapped ships, and eventually the Yellow Fleet was born.

Even had the vessels captains wanted to defy the Egyptian orders and exit the canal, it was not possible. Egypts armed forces mined parts of the waterway.

Eventually, the crew members who came from Britain, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Poland, Sweden, West Germany and the United States, among other places were allowed to evacuate and go home. And Egypt allowed the shipowners, who worried that the vessels would languish and rust without regular upkeep, to deploy rotating maintenance crews aboard.

The crew members had a lot of spare hours on their hands and spent a considerable number of them drinking, some later recalled. One captain wrote that 1.5 million empty beer bottles might have been dumped into the water, musing about what future archaeologists in a few thousand years time will think of this.

Worried about the alcohol consumption, the captains organized what they called the Great Bitter Lake Association, which essentially became a mini-community of merchant sailors from all over the world. They visited one another, turned lifeboats into sailboats for regattas and hosted weekly events on one anothers ships.

The Polish vessel had a doctor and became the sick bay. The Swedish ship was the athletic center, because it had a gym. The association members even created their own insignia and postage stamp. Their story was chronicled in a book, Stranded in the Six-Day War, by Cath Senker, a British author and educator.

Despite the efforts to keep the ships seaworthy, the vessels deteriorated over time and had to be towed out of the canal when Egypt finally reopened it in 1975.

Oil prices fell Monday morning as word spread that the giant cargo ship blocking the Suez Canal had been set free, raising hopes that hundreds of vessels, many carrying oil and petroleum products, could soon proceed through the critical waterway.

Oil prices had swirled earlier in the day, as prospects of an end to the logjam brightened, and then dimmed. But following the announcement that the containership Ever Given had been freed, the price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell about 2.5 percent, to $63.90 a barrel.

Since the vessel got stuck early last week, tankers have been lining up at the entrances to the canal waiting to deliver their cargoes to Europe and Asia.

The Suez Canal is a crucial choke point for oil shipping, but so far the impact on the oil market of this major interruption of trade flows has been relatively muted. Though prices jumped after shipping on the canal was halted, oil prices still remain below their nearly two-year highs of about $70 a barrel reached earlier this month.

Traders are now expected to focus on broader threats to the oil market, including whether the imposition of new lockdowns in Europe may hold back the recovery of oil demand from the pandemic.

From a global perspective, oil supplies are considered adequate, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers, the group known as OPEC Plus, are withholding an estimated eight million barrels a day, or about 9 percent of current consumption, from the market. Officials from OPEC Plus are expected to meet by video conference on Thursday to discuss whether to ease output cuts.

Among the assorted exports waiting to pass the Suez Canal is one that may have a more urgent deadline: tens of thousands of livestock packed into vessels that are running out of rations.

Even with the resumed voyage of the Ever Given, the cargo ship that had accidentally beached in the canal and blocked the waterway for nearly a week before it was freed on Monday, the risk to the livestock aboard other vessels remains high.

As of Monday, about 20 vessels in the canal were carrying livestock, said MarineTraffic, a global ship tracking site. Those ships, mostly from Romania but also Spain and South America, could have up to 200,000 animals aboard, estimated Animals International, an animal welfare organization that has investigated conditions aboard such vessels.

They are dying as we speak, said Gabriel Paun, the European director for Animals International. Ships typically contain a few days of food and water for the journey, but with some having left more than two weeks ago, those rations would be depleting. Any day of delay is adding unnecessary suffering and, subsequently, death.

The livestock vessels had been bound for Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, according to MarineTraffic, and Egyptian officials have delivered emergency feed to some vessels to support them.

Romanian veterinary and food and safety authority officials said on Monday that 11 vessels were transporting 105,727 sheep and 1,613 cattle, and that if the vessels remained delayed, other options were under consideration, including unloading the animals in nearby ports or returning them to Romania.

We have contacted the competent authorities in Egypt, as well as transporters and business operators, and measures have been undertaken in order to supplement the quantities of feed on the livestock vessels where is needed, the Romanian veterinary and food and safety authority said in an emailed statement.

But conditions were likely to be deteriorating, said Mr. Paun, adding that hygiene on such vessels was poor, with animals packed together in their own excrement. The best way forward, he said, would be for officials to give vessels with livestock aboard priority. Every hour matters. Every hour saves lives. We all know that they go to death, but it is about unnecessarily suffering.

Spanish agricultural ministry officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Spain has said that no ships bound for Saudi Arabia or Jordan would be loaded with livestock until the canal cleared, and Mr. Paun said that Romania had also temporarily suspended live exports.

It is not the first time the shipping of livestock along the route has drawn concern: In 2019, almost all of the 14,000 sheep aboard a vessel bound for Saudi Arabia died after it capsized outside the Port of Midia in Romania.

From the outset, when winds of more than 70 miles per hour whipped up the sands surrounding the Suez Canal into a blinding storm and the Ever Given ran aground, the forces of nature have played an outsize role in the drama that has disrupted the free flow of goods and oil around the planet.

Since the 1,300-foot cargo ship laden with nearly 20,000 containers found itself wedged in the single lane of the canal, salvage teams have had to calculate complicated questions regarding not just engineering and physics, but also meteorology and earth science.

And no natural phenomenon has been as critical as the tides.

The rising and falling of the sea is a phenomenon upon which we can always depend, according to the National Ocean Service, which is part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Tides are the regular rise and fall of the sea surface caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun and their position relative to the earth.

The tides are constant, but they can rise higher and fall lower depending on the location of the sun and moon.

When the sun and moon are in alignment as was the case with the full moon on Sunday their combined gravitational pull results in exceptionally high tides, known as Spring Tides.

That is the case at the moment in the Suez, with water levels rising some 18 inches above normal.

High tides occur 12 hours and 25 minutes apart, according to NOAA. It takes six hours and 12.5 minutes for the water at the shore to go from high to low, or from low to high.

This is the window for salvage crews to free the Ever Given. Each time the tide rises, the 220,000-ton vessel stood a better chance of becoming buoyant, and the scores of tugboats used the tidal forces to help them in their struggle to free the ship.

But every time the tide fell, new stresses were put on the hull of the ship and the dangers increased.

The tidal flows in the Suez were at their peak Sunday and Monday, meaning it was a critical moment to finally free the ship

And by early afternoon, they had succeeded, with the ship once again fully afloat.

Even with the refloating of the Ever Given meaning the Suez Canal can soon reopen for business, shipping analysts cautioned that it will take time perhaps days for the hundreds of ships now waiting for passage to continue their journeys.

Shipping analysts estimated the traffic jam was holding up nearly $10 billion in trade every day.

All global retail trade moves in containers, or 90 percent of it, said Alan Murphy, the founder of Sea-Intelligence, a maritime data and analysis firm. Name any brand name, and they will be stuck on one of those vessels.

The Syrian government said over the weekend that it would begin rationing the use of fuel after the closure of the Suez Canal delayed the delivery of a critical shipment of oil to the war-torn nation.

And in Lebanon, which in recent months has been suffering blackouts amid an economic and political crisis, local news outlets were reporting that the countrys shaky fuel supply risked further disruption if the blockage continued.

With the backlog of ships now stuck outside the canal growing to over 300 on Sunday, the threat to the oil supplies in Lebanon and Syria was an early indication of how quickly the disruption to the smooth functioning of global trade could ripple outward.

Virtually every container ship making the journey from factories in Asia to consumer markets in Europe passes through the channel. So do tankers laden with oil and natural gas.

The shutdown of the canal is affecting as much as 15 percent of the worlds container shipping capacity, according to Moodys Investor Service, leading to delays at ports around the globe. Tankers carrying 9.8 million barrels of crude, about a tenth of a days global consumption, are now waiting to enter the canal, estimates Kpler, a firm that tracks petroleum shipping.

The Syrian Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said the blockage of the canal had hindered the oil supplies to Syria and delayed arrival of a tanker carrying oil and oil derivations to Syria.

Rationing was needed, the ministry said in a statement, in order to guarantee the continued supply of basic services to Syrians such as bakeries, hospitals, water stations, communication centers, and other vital institutions.

What may well be the worlds biggest meme just got a little bigger.

A TikTok user named donut_enforcement has modified the popular Microsoft Flight Simulator game to nod to the Suez Canal mishap that has captured world attention over the past week.

It appears that we have a stuck cargo ship, a pilot observes during game play as an aerial view shows the cargo ship Ever Given wedged in a virtual Suez Canal, angled into the canal bank.

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With the Suez Canal Unblocked, the Worlds Commerce Resumes Its Course - The New York Times