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Mexico City residents search through the night for survivors of quake that killed more than 200

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Mexico City residents search through the night for survivors of quake that killed more than 200

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Gaby Elman

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Mexico City residents worked through the night into the early hours of the morning Wednesday, digging through immense piles of pancaked rubble that had once been high rise buildings searching for survivors of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 200 people across central Mexico - more than half in the capital.

They worked in the dark and often with their bare hands, with power out across 40 percent of this city of 20 million and rescue and medical services stretched to their limit.

Volunteers, medics and Marines worked side by side to clear away the chunks of concrete in the dusty air. Everywhere in the city, they formed lines to pass along containers filled with rubble and dump them into waiting trucks.

Cries of "silence" punctuated the work as people listened in hope for the sounds of survivors under the wreckage. At least 44 buildings collapsed or partly collapsed in Mexico City alone, according to Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera.

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck 76 miles southeast of the earthquake-prone capital at 1:14 p.m, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and came on the 32nd anniversary of the infamous 1985 quake that killed thousands.

The head of Mexico's civil protection agency, Luis Felipe Puente, put the toll at 217, revising it down from earlier estimates.

Even as residents were trapped inside buildings across the city and in the surrounding towns, attention was riveted on a collapsed school in the southern neighborhood of Villacoapa, where rescuers pulled out 25 bodies from the wreckage - all but four of them children, according to the federal Education Department. More are believed to be under the wreckage.

Rescue worker Pedro Serrano described to the Associated Press how he tunneled into the unstable rubble to a partially collapsed classroom of the school, only to find no one alive.

"We saw some chairs and wooden tables. The next thing we saw was a leg, and then we started to move rubble and we found a girl and two adults - a woman and a man," he said.

Late on Tuesday night, President Enrique Peña Nieto urged calm in a video message, saying the "the priority at this moment is to keep rescuing people who are still trapped and to give medical attention to the injured people." He said 40 percent of the capital and 60 percent of the neighboring Morelos state, was without power.

The president had been traveling to the southern state of Oaxaca to inspect damage from an earlier earthquake when the latest one occurred, sending him back to the capital to convene a national emergency council.

Two weeks an even larger quake took place off the Pacific coast and shook the south of the country, killing nearly 100 people. Scientists said the same large-scale tectonic mechanism caused both events: The larger North American Plate is forcing the edge of the Cocos Plate to sink. This collision generated both quakes. But it was unlikely that the quake earlier this month caused Tuesday's disaster.

Mexico is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes: The country is in a region where a number of tectonic plates butt up against one another, with huge amounts of energy waiting to be unleashed.

[Mexico's history of cataclysmic earthquakes]

Mexico City is partially built on old lake sediment, which is much softer than rock. The seismic waves can be amplified traveling through the sediment, Blakeman said, making the damage worse than in areas on more-solid ground. He said aftershocks were possible, too. The rupture was approximately 50 kilometers, or 31 miles deep, and as a rule, the shallower an earthquake is, the higher the chance for aftershocks. "Fifty kilometers is pretty shallow, so I would expect aftershocks," Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the USGS said.

The USGS's model for estimating earthquake damage predicts 100 to 1,000 fatalities and economic losses of between $100 million and $1 billion for a temblor of this scale and proximity to population centers.

The quake shook Mexico City so hard that the murky, stagnant waters of the city's ancient Xochimilco canals were churned up, turning the waterways into rollicking wave pools. Videos posted to social media showed tourists in flat-bottomed tour boats struggling to stay in their seats and hold on to their beers.

In the central neighborhood of Del Valle, a frantic scene played out Tuesday afternoon as hundreds of people gathered to search for trapped residents. At least two multistory apartment buildings fell, and residents said dozens of people could have been inside.

At the Clínica Gabriel Mancera in Mexico City, more than a dozen hospital beds had been set up on the patio outside as a triage center on Tuesday afternoon. Leticia Gonzalez, a 45-year-old maid in a nearby apartment building, said she tried to race out of the building but concrete crashed down as she fled. Her right leg was wrapped in a bandage as she grimaced in pain outside the hospital.

"We were all running like crazy," she said. "This was the worst earthquake I've ever seen."

Marisela Avila Gomez, 58, was in her apartment in the capital's central Narvarte neighborhood when the shaking began, toppling her furniture and shattering the windows. A piece of glass sliced deep into her right leg.

"My whole house is full of blood," she said.

['We're left with nothing': Mexicans in quake zone wonder how to rebuild]

In a Twitter message Tuesday after receiving news of the quake, President Trump wrote: "God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you."

In the capital's southern neighborhood of Coyoacan, the walls of colonial-era buildings cracked and sagged in the quake, with some collapsing into rubble. Residents hugged and cried in the streets. At the Barricas Don Tiburcio shop, shelves bearing food crashed down and wine bottles shattered on the floors.

"This is the worst one I have ever felt," shopkeeper Beatriz Aguilar Bustamante said. "I don't know if I will have a house when I go home."

Joshua.Partlow@washpost.com

Paul Schemm in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nick Miroff and Ben Guarino in Washington contributed to this report

Read more

The Mexican city with the highest number of quake deaths mourns

Was it the cell signal? Mexicans wonder why Trump took so long to offer quake condolences

Thirty years later, Mexicans are getting ready for the next big quake

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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Mexico City residents search through the night for survivors of quake that killed more than 200

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Mexico City residents worked through the night into the early hours of the morning Wednesday, digging through immense piles of pancaked rubble that had once been high rise buildings searching for survivors of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 200 people across central Mexico - more than half in the capital.

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Toys 'R' Us Files for Bankruptcy Protection in US

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Toys 'R' Us Files for Bankruptcy Protection in US

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Cynthia Choo
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41316205

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Amazon ‘Reviewing’ Its Website After It Suggested Bomb-Making Items

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Amazon ‘Reviewing’ Its Website After It Suggested Bomb-Making Items

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-Kevin
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/technology/uk-amazon-bomb.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Feurope

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Are Police too quick in their "open fire"?

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Are Police too quick in their "open fire"?

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Troy Jersey

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The shooting of a student at Georgia Tech university has raised questions over when and why police resort to deadly force. In some cities, including one of America's poorest and most violent, officers are trying a different approach.

On 17 November 2015, Sergeant Mickey White was driving home in his patrol car, his shift over, when a call went out about a man harassing customers at Jerry's Country Meat and Catering, a local grocery store in Arlington, Georgia.

The suspect was behaving oddly, said the employee who dialled 911, accosting people and singing a hymn - "Great is Thy Faithfulness" - as he walked up and down the aisles.

Sgt White took the call. When he arrived, the man was outside sitting in his car, the door open and hazard lights on. He was Derry Eugene Touchtone, a 58-year old white man from Headland, just over the state border in Alabama. He was unarmed.

As Sgt White pulled up behind Touchtone, the dashboard camera in his patrol car was recording.

In the video, the officer can be heard telling Touchtone to leave the vehicle. Touchtone complies but then ignores repeated instructions to put his hands on the car. Instead he walks slowly out of shot, towards White, and begins to sing.

Sgt White fires his Taser but it fails to stop Touchtone. Off camera, a tussle can be heard, followed by two gunshots.

Thirty-five seconds after Sgt White had arrived, Touchtone was dead.

The dashcam kept recording as other officers arrived on the scene, and it overheard Sgt White talking to another deputy.

"You know the bad thing about it, Brent?" White says, "I could've fought him."

"Don't second guess yourself," Brent replies. "You did what Mickey had to do."

Two years later, and 200 miles north, another controversial police shooting in Georgia has raised questions over exactly what officers have to do to protect themselves against suspects who threaten them with fists, knives, bats or other non-firearm weapons.

Scout Schultz, a 21-year-old Georgia Tech student who had battled depression, was reported to police on Sunday after being seen on campus with a knife.

When officers arrived on scene, Schultz approached them holding the knife - in reality a multi-tool with a small blade, which a family lawyer says was closed.

In an amateur video of the incident, Schultz can be heard saying "Shoot me!" while walking towards the officers.

"Drop the knife, man, come on," a police officer responds.

"Nobody wants to hurt you," another officer says.

Schultz ignores repeated requests to drop the knife, then takes a few steps towards one of the officers. The officer opens fire, hitting Schultz in the chest. The student was transported to the Grady Memorial Hospital but died from the gunshot wound.

At a press conference, Schultz's father was asked what he would like to say to the officer who pulled the trigger.

"Why did you have to shoot?" Bill Schultz said.

"That's the question, I mean that's the only question that matters right now. Why did you kill my son?"

It's question that goes to the heart of a shift in policing tactics that is taking place in some parts of the country - an attempted move away from the use of deadly force and towards de-escalation.

A series of highly publicised police shootings have drawn national attention to so-called officer-involved shootings, but the vast majority of police officers in the US still have little or no training in how to recognise and engage with a suspect suffering from a mental health crisis, or de-escalate a threat from a knife without resorting to a gun.

'Slow it down'

On 9 November 2015, about a week before Sgt Mickey White pulled up at Jerry's Country Meat, a 48-year-old man walked into a Crown Fried Chicken in Camden City, New Jersey, and pulled out a steak knife. High on PCP, and with a history of mental health problems, he was acting wildly, threatening customers.

Outside, he jabbed the knife in the direction of two police deputies before setting off down the street. He was soon surrounded by a dozen or so officers, but he continued to swing the knife and move forward.

At this point, the situation could so easily have played out the way it did at Georgia Tech on Sunday. The officers could have stood their ground, as they had the right to do. They could have followed a decades-old policing rule that anyone with a knife within 21ft presents an immediate threat to life. They could have shot him dead.

But in Camden, one of the poorest and most violent cities in the country, police have for the past few years been taking a new approach. "We stress to our officers that you do not have to rush in and rapidly resolve every scenario," said Lieutenant Kevin Lutz, who has overseen the shift in tactics.

"It's OK to slow down, it's OK to take a step back. Sometimes the best thing is to holster your weapon and talk."

The Camden officers following the knife-wielding suspect slowed down. They formed a loose group around the man, clearing the street ahead and walking alongside him. One spoke to him, periodically asking him to drop the knife. They waited. Most of the officers had their guns holstered, a few held them subtly at their sides.

About 45 minutes after police arrived they were able to Taser the man, and he was arrested.

"Those officers would 100% have been legally justified to use deadly force," said Lt Lutz. "Had they stood their ground a deadly encounter would have been forced at that point. By allowing it to unfold, it ended with an arrest and the suspect is alive. Five or 10 years ago, he wouldn't be."

But the Georgia Tech shooting on Sunday shows that similar incidents still end fatally today. Of the 40,000 or so serving police officers in the state, about 10,000 have received some kind of mental health and de-escalation training over the past decade, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The gold standard is a 40-hour course run in conjunction with the National Alliance for Mental Illness, but the majority of those 10,000 officers - and the vast majority of police officers across the country - will have received significantly less than that.

And a proportion of those 10,000 officers have retired or moved on to desk jobs, leaving no clear picture of how many current frontline officers in Georgia have had some form of de-escalation training. It is not known whether the officers that confronted Scout Schultz had had any.

According to a 2015 national survey by the Police Executive Research Forum (Perf), police officers received on average 58 hours of firearms training, 49 hours on defensive tactics, and just eight hours on mental health and de-escalation. There are no states which mandate de-escalation training.

Lessons from the UK

Camden police worked closely with Perf in developing its new approach. Perf in turn took inspiration from officers in Scotland. In late 2014 - shortly after the police shooting of Michael Brown sparked violent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri - Perf director Chuck Wexler was in Scotland for a leadership training programme.

Looking around him at a graduation ceremony, he was struck by the fact that none of the officers were carrying guns.

"What hit me was the fact that these officers deal with similar knife situations that we deal with. A knife in Glasgow is the same as a knife in downtown Washington DC, so why are they able to do it without shooting?"

Mr Wexler returned to the US armed with the UK's National Decision Model - a framework that emphasises communication, patience, and minimal force. He took note of interesting tactics, like a police officer removing his hat to appear more open and less confrontational. Perf now works with police departments across the country to train officers in looking for alternatives to firing their gun.

Those alternatives can present themselves in any number of small decisions before a final, momentous one, said Greg Ridgeway, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied police shootings.

"Often you look at the three seconds before the shooting and it looks like a good shoot," he said. "Suspect comes at officer with knife, officer shoots. Fine. But step back five minutes, even a minute, and you start questioning how the officer got themselves into that situation where they had no option but to shoot. And you see that a little bit of patience, a little bit of distance, could have resolved some of those incidents peacefully."

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) declined to comment on the incident at Georgia Tech, but the video suggests that crisis intervention tactics - and the kind of patience exhibited by the officers in Camden County - might have resolved that incident peacefully.

GBI director Vernon Keenan acknowledged that the amount of mental health and de-escalation training currently given to most officers was "minimal". He said the state was in the process of reviewing the amount of training on offer and recruiting 12 new permanent staff to oversee more.

Even those who bang the drum loudest for a rethink over the use of deadly force acknowledge that it is still sometimes the only option, and the 300 million or so guns in America put it in a vastly different position to countries like Scotland. "Make no mistake, there are times when force is going to be immediate and required," said Lt Lutz.

But in places like Camden, they are trying to shift the emphasis. Officers are taught to put an "absolute value on the life of the person they encounter, regardless of what behaviour they are exhibiting at the time," said Lt Lutz.

"If our officers value life, and they are morally sound, and they are responding to the call and thinking through why they are there, then we believe some of the more controversial shootings that have taken place across the country, right or wrong, can be avoided."
Read more

How often are US police killed in the line of duty?

Three days that shook America

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Are US police too quick to shoot knife-wielding suspects?

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The shooting of a student at Georgia Tech university has raised questions over when and why police resort to deadly force. In some cities, including one of America's poorest and most violent, officers are trying a different approach.

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Myungsoo Bang

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And yet, on a three-day trip in July to harvest coral samples, he repeatedly found himself surprised. The Rib Reef, where he was diving, had been healthy and vibrant only a year ago. But during his return visit, large sections were dead, covered in algae that looked like soot.

The samples he collected - of the Pocillopora acuta species - were often the only healthy chunks of coral to be found among canyons of dead reefs.

Near the end of their research trip, he and two other scientists dove for nearly an hour before finding just three samples, which they removed with a hammer and chisel and placed in a metal supermarket dish rack for transport to the surface.

"This is probably a three-year-old coral," he said back on the boat, admiring a pinkish sample with a handful of healthy branches that made it look like a fist-size shrub. "We want to take the whole adult coral, collect its babies and then grow the larvae into adult coral."

Professor van Oppen, a senior scientist who oversees Dr. Cantin's research, said that part of what makes the Australian experiment stand out is the "sea simulator" at the Townsville marine institute. It is a complex high technology laboratory where corals live in tanks with water temperatures that can be calibrated to a tenth of a degree and simulate seasonal patterns of warming events. Lighting systems replicate the moon cycles that corals use to time their spawning.

Future generations of corals, the offspring of the those Dr. Cantin harvested, will be tested for resilience in this artificial environment, with warmer and more acidic water that mimics what scientists are predicting for the years 2050 and 2100.

The strongest corals will then become parents again, with some crossbreeding of the same species from different sections of the reef and also crossbreeding of different species to create genetic hybrids.

"If the speed of natural adaptation was fast enough to keep up with climate change, we wouldn't see the scale of loss we're seeing," Professor van Oppen said. "There's an urgent need to come up with ways to slow it down."

Professor van Oppen is collaborating with Dr. Gates, who heads the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology on a small island in Kaneohe Bay, off Oahu. Their joint project is partially funded by the family foundation of Mr. Allen, the billionaire philanthropist.

On a recent day at the lab, a manager, Jen Davidson, meticulously examined coral colonies growing in indoor tanks under artificial lights.

Starting with hardy coral polyps that survived past environmental assaults in Kaneohe Bay, the Gates lab is trying to make them even hardier, crossbreeding the corals and testing offspring in water treated to mimic the hotter, more acidic conditions likely to prevail in a future ocean.

Under normal conditions the animals grow and build their reefs only slowly, one of the factors that is stymying the effort to save them. "We can do all this work here, but can we scale it up enough to make an impact?" Ms. Davidson asked.

Researchers in Florida may be closest to answering that question. At the Mote laboratory in Sarasota, a researcher named David Vaughan has perfected a technique in which coral samples are broken into tiny fragments; the polyps grow much faster than normal as they attempt to re-establish a colony.

"It used to take us six years to produce 600 corals," Dr. Vaughan said in an interview. "Now we can produce 600 corals in an afternoon, and be ready in a few months to plant them."

Florida's reefs have been badly damaged over the years, not just by climate change but by more direct human assaults, like overfishing that disturbs the ecological balance. Yet the Mote lab and other centers have already replanted thousands of small coral colonies.

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And yet, on a three-day trip in July to harvest coral samples, he repeatedly found himself surprised. The Rib Reef, where he was diving, had been healthy and vibrant only a year ago. But during his return visit, large sections were dead, covered in algae that looked like soot.

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Why doesn’t the Muslim community look up to its black celebrities?

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Why doesn’t the Muslim community look up to its black celebrities?

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Christine Yim

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The biggest headlines out of Sunday's Emmy Awards involved the diversity among the winners, particularly all the firsts for African Americans and South Asian Muslims in entertainment.

While fans celebrated the first African Americans to win for comedy directing and writing (Donald Glover for "Atlanta" and Lena Waithe for "Master of None") and the first South Asian Muslim to win for acting (Riz Ahmed for "The Night Of"), fewer took notice of the historic firsts emerging among Hollywood's African American Muslims.

Earlier in the week, comedian Dave Chappelle - who converted to Islam nearly 20 years ago - won a Creative Arts Emmy (guest acting in a comedy series) for his controversial post-election "Saturday Night Live" episode.

Last year, Mahershala Ali, a black Muslim, won an Academy Award in 2017 for best supporting actor in "Moonlight."

Ali noted that it was a honor for him to be the first Muslim actor to win an Academy Award. "Regardless of one's theology, as an artist my job is the same - to connect with these characters as deeply as possible," he said. "I'm just an artist who feels blessed to have the opportunities I have had."

The Muslim community cheered British-Pakistani actor Ahmed's Emmy win this year, and Indian-American writer Aziz Ansari's the year before; both portrayals showcased elements of second-generation life in America and addressed Muslim identity.

However, there was far less fanfare for Chappelle or Ali, whose Muslim identity was challenged by some members of the Muslim community. The son of a Christian minister, Ali converted to Islam in his 20s. He made his shahada, or the Muslim declaration of belief, after attending a prayer service at a mosque with his partner, Amatus Sami-Karim.

Ali belongs to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which includes an estimated 20,000 adherents in the United States and is also a minority in mostly Sunni countries like Pakistan. Because of their distinct beliefs - Ahmadis believe their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is the faith's "long-awaited messiah" - some Muslims do not consider Ahmadis fellow followers of Islam.

As a result, they refuse to recognize Ali as the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar. Some went as far as sending hate-filled messages on Twitter, condemning Ali's win and expressing disgust that in addition to being Ahmadi, Ali won his role in a movie about a gay black man.

"I don't think it's just because Mahershala Ali is Ahmadi," said Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, a professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan and author of "Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States." "I also think it's because Mahershala Ali is black."

There's a double-standard for Muslims in entertainment, and race, cultural background and class play a part.

Muslim-born stars with South Asian heritage fail to garner such backlash, even when they leave their faith. "Secular Muslims" Ansari and Kumail Nanjiani (acclaimed for "Silicon Valley" and his recent hit movie "The Big Sick") are applauded for on-screen portrayals of forgoing Islamic customs - eating pork in secret, consuming alcohol or engaging in premarital sex - as both the actors and their characters move away from the tradition in which they were raised.

Black Muslim entertainers aren't afforded the same leniency, since Arab and South Asian Muslim communities are more likely to question their religious authority or authenticity.

"It's a conflation between your ethnic identity and your religious identity," Khabeer said, referring to Ansari and Nanjiani. "I think [South Asian and Arab Muslims] are able to look the other way, or choose to emphasize with something else."

It's hard for Muslim Americans to celebrate black Muslims' success in entertainment - whether it's Ali, Chapelle, Busta Rhymes, Akon, Lupe Fiasco, Ice Cube, Iman or many others - when black people are not seen on par or as equal with the immigrant Muslim diaspora due to class divides.

"Muslim immigrants came over empowered in a particular way, they came over with resources we didn't have, and they also didn't have the social stigma many African Americans had," said Zain Abdullah, an associate professor of religion at Temple University and author of "Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem." "We cannot compare African American Muslims with South Asian or immigrant Muslims, because we're on two separate class levels."

As immigrant populations grow, African Americans constitute a smaller proportion of the adult American Muslim community, just 13 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. The lack of inclusion, or celebration, for black Muslim entertainers could hinder broader efforts to destigmatize Muslim identity.

Obviously, Muslims have faced the challenge of fighting stigma and stereotypes, particularly involving terrorism, ever since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Within the Muslim American community, the parents of second-generation children were moved by the ideas of integration and normalizing Islam, while their children want to find a way to be Muslim in a country where they continue to experience anti-Muslim sentiment.

Out of these generational shifts, Ansari and Nanjiani's comedic characters emerge to buck the stereotypes of South Asian immigrants.

Perhaps the best example of overcoming the generational challenges of being Muslim in America could be found in one of the country's most beloved adherents of Islam, the African American boxer Muhammad Ali.

"Muhammad Ali showed how to mainstream yourself," Abdullah said. "Even though he was a heavyweight boxer and all, he still represents that kind of popularity. He was one of America's favorite sons. His [Muslimness] was integrated into a the larger narrative of what it is be American."

Ali called himself "The Greatest" and preached Islam at the peak of the civil rights era, when black activists were in danger and groups like the Nation of Islam were viewed as a threat to America. Still, Ali refused to minimize his blackness and Muslimness.

Instead of aspiring to whiteness, Ali exemplified relentless pride in his faith and radical self-love for his racial identity. He didn't need validation, but rather, those in power needed his. He loved the communities and identities he represented, and the world loved him back for it.
Sarah A. Harvard is a New York-based reporter covering the intersection of religion, race, immigration and politics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, VICE, HuffPost Politics, TeenVogue and Mic. Correction: The title of Zain Abdullah's book has been updated.

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emmys; muslim; islam; black; race; religion; dave chapelle; riz ahmed; mahershala ali; aziz ansari;

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Analysis | Why doesn't the Muslim community look up to its black celebrities?

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The biggest headlines out of Sunday's Emmy Awards involved the diversity among the winners, particularly all the firsts for African Americans and South Asian Muslims in entertainment.

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-Patrick Song

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/opinion/editorials/trump-un-address-north-korea.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

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Under law, Mr. Trump is supposed to certify to Congress next month that Iran is still complying, and Tuesday's comments were the strongest sign that he will not, very likely forcing Congress to deal with the politically contentious issue. If America withdraws from the agreement, it will outrage the other major powers that are party to the deal - France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China - and give Iran an excuse to resume a full-blown nuclear program. Why Mr. Trump would risk that when North Korea's program is a full-time concern is a mystery.

Mr. Trump's largely benign comments about the United Nations were encouraging, considering he once condemned it as useless and having no place in his "America First" vision. But his references to the body as a collection of sovereign nations seemed intended for his base, most of which applauds Mr. Trump's nationalism and much of which suspects the United Nations is bent on establishing a world government.

While Mr. Trump praised the world body for its work with refugees and health and commended the secretary general, António Guterres, for his efforts to reform the institution, he complained that the United States, at 22 percent of the budget, pays "an unfair share of the burden."

Mr. Obama was not blind to the United Nations' weaknesses, observing that "this body has often become a forum for sowing discord instead of forging common ground; a venue for playing politics and exploiting grievances rather than solving problems." And he told members that "responsibility and leadership in the 21st century demand more." But he was also more committed to multilaterism in general, noting that after the George W. Bush years, his administration had "re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills."

As to presidential bearing, there was all the difference in the world. Mr. Trump, still obsessed with his victory, asserted that the United States has done "very well" since Election Day and that the military would soon be "the strongest it has ever been." Mr. Obama spoke of being humbled by the office and determined to "act boldly and collectively on behalf of justice and prosperity at home and abroad."

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Opinion | Warmongers and Peacemakers at the U.N.

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Under law, Mr. Trump is supposed to certify to Congress next month that Iran is still complying, and Tuesday's comments were the strongest sign that he will not, very likely forcing Congress to deal with the politically contentious issue.

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Ukraine's Women's Football Clip Promotes Online Sexism Row

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Ukraine's Women's Football Clip Promotes Online Sexism Row

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Peri Vikatos
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-41321396

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http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/world/global-slavery-estimates-ilo/index.html

michael kim

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http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41310350

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Japan Exports Surge at Fastest Pace in Nearly Four Years

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Japan Exports Surge at Fastest Pace in Nearly Four Years

# data[].attributes.body
Jian Kim

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Mexico: Huge earthquake topples buildings, killing more than 200

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Mexico: Huge earthquake topples buildings, killing more than 200

# data[].attributes.body
Jinny Choi

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A strong earthquake has struck central Mexico, killing more than 200 people and toppling dozens of buildings in the capital, Mexico City.

At least 30 people, mostly children, died after a school collapsed in the capital, local media report.

The 7.1 magnitude quake also caused major damage in neighbouring states.

It struck shortly after many people had taken part in an earthquake drill, exactly 32 years after a quake killed thousands in Mexico City.

The country is prone to earthquakes and earlier this month an 8.1 magnitude tremor in the south left at least 90 people dead.

Though it struck a similar region, Tuesday's earthquake does not appear to be connected with the quake on 7 September, which was at least 30 times more energetic, the BBC's Jonathan Amos writes.

Where was worst hit?

The epicentre of the latest quake was near Atencingo in Puebla state, about 120km (75 miles) from Mexico City, with a depth of 51km, the US Geological Survey says.

The prolonged tremor hit at 13:14 local time (18:14 GMT) on Tuesday and sent thousands of residents into the streets.

Why did only some buildings collapse?

The race to help after the quake

An earlier death toll of nearly 250 was lowered to 217 by the country's national co-ordinator for civil protection:

Morelos state: 71 dead

Puebla state: 43 dead

Mexico City: 86 dead

Mexico state: 12 dead

Guerrero: 4 dead

Oaxaca: 1

As many as 37 people - 32 children and five adults - died when the Enrique Rébsamen elementary school collapsed in Mexico City's southern Coapa district, Efe news agency reports, quoting local media.

According to Mexican news site Reforma, 30 bodies have been found at the school and 22 people are missing.

Elsewhere, 15 people were killed when a church near Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano collapsed during Mass, Puebla's governor is quoted by Reuters news agency as saying. The volcano itself had a small eruption as a result of the tremor.

Alfredo del Mazo Maza, governor of the State of Mexico, said schools would be closed on Wednesday. He also ordered all public transport to operate services for free so that people could travel home.

What about survivors?

Emergency workers, aided by military personnel and volunteers, have been working through the night in the search for people trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

At the Enrique Rébsamen school, three people were rescued at about midnight, Reuters reports, adding that one child trapped under the debris was saved after oxygen was supplied through a tube.

At least 209 schools were affected by the quake, 15 of which have suffered severe damage, Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education says.

Buildings at 44 locations collapsed or were badly damaged, Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera told TV network Televisa. These are said to include a six-storey block of flats, a supermarket and a factory.

About two million people in the capital were left without electricity and phone lines were down. Officials warned residents not to smoke on the streets as gas mains could have been ruptured.

Some 70% of the electricity supply which went down has now been restored, Mexico's Federal Electricity Commission said.

Live updates

In pictures: Huge earthquake

Are Mexico's two earthquakes connected?

In a televised address, the president said an emergency had been declared for the affected areas and the military had been drafted in to help with the response.

He also urged residents whose properties were structurally sound to remain in their homes where possible to allow emergency services and those helping with rescue efforts to clear the streets.

Across Mexico City, teams of rescue workers and volunteers clawed through the rubble with picks, shovels and their bare hands.

"My wife is there. I haven't been able to communicate with her," Juan Jesus Garcia, 33, told Reuters, choking back tears next to a collapsed building.

"She is not answering and now they are telling us we have to turn off our mobile phones because there is a gas leak."
Have you been affected by the earthquake? If it is safe to do so you can email your story to haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk

Jennifer Swaddle, a teacher at the British International School in Mexico City, told the BBC that part of her classroom had collapsed.

"As we were leaving, the outside of my classroom wall fell, so there was a big pile of rubble. Luckily, fantastically, nobody was hurt, but it was incredibly frightening," she said.

History of deadly earthquakes

Can earthquakes be predicted?

What happened in 1985?

An earthquake drill was being held in Mexico City on Tuesday to mark the 32nd anniversary of a magnitude 8 quake that killed up to 10,000 people and left 30,000 others injured.

The severe tremor caused serious damage to Mexico City and its surrounding areas, with more than 400 buildings collapsed and thousands more damaged.

Correspondents say that residents may have mistaken earthquake alarms for part of the day of drills in the wake of the 1985 quake.

Mexico City is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with more than 20 million people living in the metropolitan area.

Why is Mexico so prone to earthquakes?

Mexico is one of the most seismically active regions in the world, sitting on top of three of the Earth's largest tectonic plates - the North American, Cocos and Pacific plates.

The latest tremor occurred near the boundary between the North American and Cocos plates, where the latter slides beneath the former.

According to the US Geological Survey, the country has seen 19 earthquakes of at least 6.5 magnitude within 155 miles of the epicentre of Tuesday's quake over the past century.

How has the world reacted?

Foreign leaders sent messages of support to Mexico as the scale of the disaster became clear:

US President Donald Trump, who has courted controversy with his plans for a border wall with Mexico, tweeted: "God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you"

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also tweeted his support following the "devastating news"

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis, in New York for the UN General Assembly, expressed his "solidarity" with the Mexican people

Pope Francis said his thoughts and prayers were with the families of those who had lost loved ones in the "devastating" quake. "In this moment of pain I want to express my closeness and my prayer to all of the beloved Mexican population," the pontiff said at the Vatican

The Mexican government earlier issued the following guidance on what to do if a quake strikes in the country:

stay calm

find the evacuation route and meeting point

stay away from windows and objects that may fall

in case of emergency call 911

do not use lifts

The UK Foreign Office has said that those travelling to Mexico should follow the advice of the local authorities.

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Huge quake kills more than 200 in Mexico

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A strong earthquake has struck central Mexico, killing more than 200 people and toppling dozens of buildings in the capital, Mexico City. At least 30 people, mostly children, died after a school collapsed in the capital, local media report. The 7.1 magnitude quake also caused major damage in neighbouring states.

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Athena Voulgaris

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Tsipras, I hear, has taken to calling America his "strategic partner." He's angling for a visit with Trump (who may not like the fact that the young Greek leader and Obama bonded). He's trying to steal the thunder of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the charismatic, Harvard-educated leader of the opposition New Democracy party, by discovering the merits of private enterprise.

That's not an easy sell for Tsipras, who, at 43, is a formidable political maneuverer. The public sector remains bloated; old Greek habits of cronyism and nepotism are too encrusted to extirpate. The civil servants' union is up in arms over the outrageous notion that public employees should be subjected to a performance evaluation. That's deemed "divisive." I guess it could be.

An enduring symbol of Greek bureaucratic inertia is the vast Elliniko area in southern Athens once occupied by the airport. Its fate has been discussed for more than a decade. This could be one of Europe's biggest real estate projects but every time agreement is reached on private investment, another obstacle arises, most recently objections from the Central Archaeological Council and Piraeus forestry authority. There are, one weary observer suggested, some very tall weeds.

In the north, a $3 billion investment - by the Canadian mining company Eldorado Gold - is also in danger of unraveling because of an impasse over permits. Some 2,400 jobs are in play.

If post-populist Tsipras is serious about investment and growth - and they're the only way forward for Greece - he needs to show he can break the logjam. But his coalition is still paralyzed somewhere between ideology and pragmatism.

Still, in a turbulent neighborhood, through a disaster rarely seen outside wartime, with more than one million refugees transiting the country in recent years (and tens of thousands still there), Greece has held - and held with generosity. That is remarkable. I salute Greece.

There's more behind the stability than the sun, family, remittances and civilization I mentioned. Geoffrey Pyatt, the American ambassador, told me he went to the island of Rhodes last month and met with Giorgos Hadjimarkos, the South Aegean Regional Governor. A United States troop ship with 300 Marines on board was docked. As discussion turned to the challenges in the area, Hadjimarkos walked to the window, opened the drapes, and, pointing to the ship, said: "Ambassador, the best way to assure Greece's strategic direction sits right there in the harbor."

Greek anti-Americanism, once virulent, has gone out of vogue. Old institutions, set up after World War II, have been mocked by Trump. But they have come through during the Greek crisis. Without NATO, without the European Union, the possibility of a catastrophic Greek lurch into chaos would have been much higher. Trump should stick a sign above his bed: "The European Union is a peace magnet."

Of course, Greek participation in the euro, a currency improbably shared with Germany, was behind the crisis; and the European Union was one of the institutions imposing the austerity that wreaked havoc. But in the end, Greeks were reassured by their European Union passports and by the knowledge that they live now in a wider framework of peace and stability.

A powerful lesson of the crisis is Europe's resilience. The commitment of countries like Greece and France to the European Union is strong - more so since the British decision to leave. Romance, not reason, lay behind Greece's miguided inclusion in the euro, but the romance had a kernel of truth: Greece is central to the European idea.

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Tsipras, I hear, has taken to calling America his "strategic partner." He's angling for a visit with Trump (who may not like the fact that the young Greek leader and Obama bonded). He's trying to steal the thunder of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the charismatic, Harvard-educated leader of the opposition New Democracy party, by discovering the merits of private enterprise.

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Never again would Cassini send home the images and data that inspired discoveries and wonder during the probe's 13 years in orbit around the ringed planet.

"For me, there's a core of sadness, in part in thinking of the breakup of the Cassini family," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist. "But it's both an end and a beginning as these people go off and work on other things."

The mission for Cassini, in orbit since 2004, stretched far beyond the original four-year plan, sending back multitudes of striking photographs, solving some mysteries and upending prevailing notions about the solar system with completely unexpected discoveries.

"Cassini is really one of those quintessential missions from NASA," said Thomas H. Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science. "It hasn't just changed what we know about Saturn, but how we think about the world."

Its end closes the chapter on the exploration of Saturn for probably a decade or longer. Still, there is much left for scientists to study and decipher.

Cassini's hazy origin story

Cassini had its origins in the brainstorm of two scientists, Daniel Gautier of the Paris Observatory and Wing-Huen Ip, then at the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Germany.

NASA's two Voyager spacecraft flew through the Saturn system in 1980 and 1981. Voyager 1, in particular, provided a close-up look at Titan that was enthralling and maddening. Larger than the planet Mercury, Titan was enshrouded in haze. The atmosphere was thicker than Earth's and contained methane and other carbon-based molecules. What lay below, no one knew.

"Those discoveries led to many more questions," Dr. Ip recalled.

In 1982, Dr. Gautier and Dr. Ip proposed to the European Space Agency that it collaborate with NASA on a Saturn mission: an orbiter paired with a probe that would parachute onto Titan.

The orbiter became Cassini, built and operated by NASA; the Titan probe was named Huygens, a project of the European Space Agency. The Europeans approved Huygens in 1988. A year later, NASA gave the go-ahead for Cassini. The craft were named for a Dutch astronomer, Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Titan and figured out Saturn had rings, and Giovanni Domenico Cassini, a French-Italian astronomer, who discovered four other major moons of Saturn, each in the 17th century.

To take advantage of the gravitational boost from a flyby of Jupiter to accelerate Cassini-Huygens, the spacecraft was launched on Oct. 15, 1997.

Discovering an Earthlike alien moon

Seven years later, Cassini swung into orbit around Saturn. A few months later, Huygens headed to its rendezvous with Titan, the first attempt to touchdown on a moon other than our own.

The lander was equipped with instruments to identify molecules in the air, measure the winds and haze, and take pictures on the way down.

Because the spacecraft designers did not know what the surface was made of, they had designed Huygens to handle several possibilities, including floating for a few minutes if it had turned out that Titan's surface was a global ocean of methane.

Instead, Huygens bumped onto solid ground, surrounded by a complex network of small rivers. "If you would jump from your table or your desk, you would land on the floor at this speed," said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, the project scientist for Huygens. "A very reasonable landing speed."

Photographs at the surface showed what looked like rounded cobblestones that turned out to be blocks of water ice.

The data from Huygens, together with that gathered by Cassini in repeated flybys, revealed Titan as a world shaped by active geological processes with rivers, lakes and rain. But in the frigid temperatures there, about minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit, the fluid is not water, but methane. "Titan has really revealed an Earthlike world," Dr. Lebreton said.

A journey toward disintegration

NASA spacecraft, if they survive to their destination, often just keep going.

Cassini stayed seven more years to watch changes in Saturn through the passing of seasons. It takes Saturn 29.5 years to orbit the sun, so Cassini has been there for almost half a Saturn year.

One of the mission's most surprising discoveries was an ocean of water beneath the icy exterior of Enceladus that may be heated by hydrothermal vents similar to those at the bottom of oceans on Earth. The water on this moon and the carbon compounds it contains are some of the key ingredients needed for life that scientists would have thought unlikely on a moon just 313 miles wide.

Even at the end, 20 years after launch, Cassini and its instruments remained in good working shape. The plutonium power source was still generating electricity. But there was not enough propellant fuel left to safely send Cassini anywhere except into Saturn.

Any spacecraft, even one launched two decades ago, has unwanted microbial hitchhikers aboard. In particular, planetary scientists wanted to ensure that there was zero chance of the spacecraft crashing into and contaminating Enceladus or Titan, which could also be hospitable for life. And NASA wants to leave the Saturn system pristine.

In the very last phase of the mission, Cassini dove through the gap between Saturn and the planet's innermost ring. That provided new, sharp views of the rings and allowed the craft to probe the planet's interior, as another NASA spacecraft, Juno, is doing at Jupiter.

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national aeronautics and space administration

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Cassini Vanishes Into Saturn, Its Mission Celebrated and Mourned

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Never again would Cassini send home the images and data that inspired discoveries and wonder during the probe's 13 years in orbit around the ringed planet. "For me, there's a core of sadness, in part in thinking of the breakup of the Cassini family," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist.

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-Irene Jung

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Li Wenxing was starting a new life. In May, the young university graduate left his home in rural China on the offer of work with a software company in the city of Tianjin.

But the job was a scam and Mr Li was swept into the web of a gang running a pyramid scheme.

Two months later he was dead.

The tragedy, which is being investigated, sparked national outrage and has illuminated the growing problem of financial fraud and its devastating impact on communities in China.

"It's almost an epidemic, especially in rural areas," says Violet Ho, senior managing director at Kroll.

Pyramid schemes

Pyramid schemes are flourishing in parts of the country where education levels are low.

The schemes prey on the vulnerable, typically young people and the elderly, with the promise of employment or lucrative returns for direct sales of products like cosmetics or health supplements.

Victims are assured of great fortune if they recruit more investors into the operation.

"They give the illusion to naive people that they can get rich quickly without risk," says Ms Ho, who investigates financial systems and advises on China.

Peer-to-peer lending and virtual currencies have fuelled the spread of other investing scams, luring victims with little financial knowledge.

Pyramid - and Ponzi - schemes rely on attracting a constant stream of new investors, and some of the funds raised are paid to earlier backers.

Ms Ho says the Chinese swindles are distinct from frauds typically seen in Western societies due to the lack of sophistication of the investors involved.

Victims have sunk everything they have - borrowing money and even selling their houses - on the promise of even bigger returns.

Chinese social media site Weibo is awash with talk of pyramid schemes. "I've lost count of the people who've been trapped", said one user.

Social problem

It's a social problem the government is fighting to contain.

Victor Shih, associate professor in political economy and China expert at the University of California San Diego, says a combination of factors have spurred the spread of these scams.

"The rapid proliferation of pyramid schemes is caused by high growth in living costs, especially housing costs, which enticed many to look for higher returns - and previously light regulation at the local level," Prof Shih says.

Under pressure to grow their economies, local governments had in the past endorsed some dubious investment schemes - without properly understanding them - on the belief they would deliver strong returns and spur growth.

"Pyramid schemes were [one popular idea] which they thought could keep driving economic growth," says Prof Ning Zhu, deputy dean of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University.

"I don't think this is happening any more," he adds.

Government crackdown

Authorities are paying more attention.

The government acknowledges the number of big pyramid scheme cases has shot up, and that organisers are using various channels to lure and cheat unsuspecting Chinese out of their money and assets.

"Pyramid schemes directly harm the market's economic order and social harmony and stability," Beijing said in a recent statement.

China is carrying out three months of co-ordinated action to investigate and clean-up the practice of pyramid selling.

As part of the crackdown, more than 100 arrests were made in southern China last month, targeting individuals over their suspected links to a 360m yuan (£42.3m) pyramid scheme.

Authorities had at least one major bust last year - breaking up a 50bn yuan online finance scam which was suspected of defrauding 900,000 investors.

And while there may be more reaction from the government - the number of pyramid schemes investigated in 2016 jumped 19% on the previous year - the tactics of the con artists at work in China appear to be getting more insidious.

Sinister tactics

Days before Li Wenxing died, the young man reportedly told his family "No matter who calls for money, don't give it to them."

Soon after arriving in Tianjin Mr Li became distant, hard to reach by phone and began asking friends for loans, according to Reuters.

Mr Li was found to have drowned in a small pond outside of Tianjin, the report said. Police said he had been involved in a pyramid scam and investigations are continuing.

Kroll's Violet Ho says the methods like the extortion believed to have been used by the group in Mr Li's case are common.

She says scams in China have become more sinister as organisers illegally detain people and use intimidation tactics on victims, bringing the problem to a "different level".

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Li Wenxing was starting a new life. In May, the young university graduate left his home in rural China on the offer of work with a software company in the city of Tianjin. But the job was a scam and Mr Li was swept into the web of a gang running a pyramid scheme.

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Trump threatens to totally destroy North Korea

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Trump threatens to totally destroy North Korea

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Jeffrey Chen

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NEW YORK - President Trump on Tuesday warned the United Nations that the world faces "great peril" from gathering threats posed by rogue regimes with powerful weapons and terrorists with expanding reach across the globe, issuing a call to fellow leaders to join the United States in the fight to defeat them.

"We meet at a time of immense promise and great peril," Trump said in his maiden address to more than 150 international delegations at the annual U.N. General Assembly. "It is up to us whether we will lift the world to new heights or let it fall into a valley of disrepair."

The president's address was highly anticipated around the world for signs of how his administration would engage with the U.N. after he had criticized the organization during his campaign as being bloated and ineffective. Trump offered a hand to fellow leaders but also called on them to embrace "national sovereignty" and to do more to ensure the prosperity and security of their own countries.

"I will always put America first just like you, the leaders of your countries, should put your countries first," Trump said.

The president warned of growing threats from North Korea and Iran, and he said, "The scourge of our planet is a group of rogue regimes." He praised the U.N. for enacting economic sanctions on Pyongyang, but he also said that if Kim Jong Un's regime continued to threaten the United States and its allies and destabilize East Asia, his administration would be prepared to defend the country.

"We will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," Trump said, before calling Kim by a nickname he gave the dictator on Twitter over the weekend. "Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself."

[In a tweet, Trump sticks North Korea's Kim Jong Un with a nickname: 'Rocket Man']

Trump added, "If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph."

Trump also called the U.N.-backed Iran nuclear deal is "an embarrassment" to the United States and hinted that his administration could soon declare Tehran out of compliance. "I don't think you've heard the end of it," he said.

Trump opened his address by thanking those in the room whose government had offered support and resources to help the United States in the recovery from a pair of recent hurricanes that damaged Florida, Texas and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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In U.N. speech, Trump calls Kim Jong Un the 'Rocket Man' and threatens to 'totally destroy North Korea'

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NEW YORK - President Trump on Tuesday warned the United Nations that the world faces "great peril" from gathering threats posed by rogue regimes with powerful weapons and terrorists with expanding reach across the globe, issuing a call to fellow leaders to join the United States in the fight to defeat them.

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Mexico Earthquake Kills Hundreds, Trapping Many Under Rubble

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Mexico Earthquake Kills Hundreds, Trapping Many Under Rubble

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Arundeep Patwalia

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Buildings also collapsed across the neighborhood of Condesa, another fashionable district in the city constructed atop soft soil and extremely vulnerable to earthquakes. Outside, thousands and thousands stood in the streets, avenues and sidewalks, filling the popular neighborhoods with a sense of dread.

On Laredo Street, an entire eight-story apartment building had fallen into the road, leaving an enormous heap of concrete and rubble pouring into the street. At least 100 people stood atop the pile clearing it by hand, piece by piece, passing boulders and twisted steel pipes along a human chain that radiated from the heap like spokes.

The sound of shouts filled the air, men barking orders at one another. Then came a call for silence - to listen for the voices of anyone trapped inside, screaming for help.

Standing on the sidewalk, Salomón Chertorivski, the secretary of economic development for Mexico City, said he believed that 10 people were trapped inside the structure. The rumble of a backhoe digging into the building's remains and the whir of helicopters overhead dominated. A stretcher was passed up to the top of the heap.

"Whoever isn't helping, leave," one worker shouted to no one in particular.

Witnesses had watched in horror as people tried to escape before the building collapsed.

"It fell straight down," said Moises Escobar, 25, a recent college graduate. "There was a lot of smoke and dust."

Workers continued their mad scramble to pull those from the wreckage. A man raced down Amsterdam Street, looking for tools.

"Saws, hacksaws - anything to cut wood and metal," he screamed.

Someone returned from a nearby building with a hacksaw and handed it to him, and he prepared to sprint back to the mound.

"I work near here, but we have to help," he said. "It's our country."

That collective spirit filled the disaster site, as neighbors and those passing by joined to help.

Alexia Meza, 23, was in a nearby building when the collapse occurred. "You could hear the screams," she said.

She raced into the crowd surrounding the fallen building, her arms raised to collect whatever debris workers were passing down to clear from the site.

The epicenters of Tuesday's earthquake and the larger one on Sept. 7 were more than 400 miles apart, but they both occurred in a region where one of the earth's crustal plates, the Cocos, is sliding beneath another, the North American.

Paul Earle, a seismologist with the United States Geological Survey, said it was too early to say whether there was any connection between the two quakes. Although the first was much stronger, the one on Tuesday was much closer to Mexico City, causing more damage in the capital.

There were also reports of deaths and extensive damage in Jojutla de Juárez, Morelos, a city about 60 miles west of the epicenter. Residents said that many buildings, including businesses and homes, had been destroyed. Electricity was cut, and water was scarce because water tanks - many located above ground or on rooftops - ruptured or cracked.

President Enrique Peña Nieto said on Twitter that he had been flying to Oaxaca at the time of the earthquake and had immediately returned to Mexico City. Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Peña Nieto attended a memorial service for those killed in the 1985 earthquake.

Emotions ran high as everyone waited for people to be pulled from the fractured structure in the Roma Norte neighborhood. Tearful outbursts clashed with shouts for help and the din of trucks and crews working feverishly.

Hours after the building fell, emergency personnel pulled Laura Rita Bernal Torres, 36, out of the rubble - alive.

She had been in the same tattoo class as Ms. Hernández, on the second floor. As she emerged, a round of applause erupted from the hundreds of workers and rescuers nearby.

"I can't feel my legs," she said. A block of concrete had fallen on her back.

Ms. Bernal then began to sob, asking about the fate of her classmate, Ms. Hernández, who was trapped beside her in the building. She figured she must have been killed.

When a New York Times reporter told her that Ms. Hernández had in fact made it out alive, Ms. Bernal began weeping anew.

"I can't believe it," she cried. "Thank God!"

More survivors emerged from the debris. Ernesto Sota Senderos, a 64-year-old engineer, was pulled out unconscious. But his son was still trapped inside the building. Others with loved ones inside urged rescuers to persist.

"You can do this," screamed a man in a suit as he ran beside a gurney. "Fight for your life, please!"

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Kirk Semple, Paulina Villegas and Elisabeth Malkin

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Mexico Earthquake Kills Hundreds, Trapping Many Under Rubble

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Buildings also collapsed across the neighborhood of Condesa, another fashionable district in the city constructed atop soft soil and extremely vulnerable to earthquakes. Outside, thousands and thousands stood in the streets, avenues and sidewalks, filling the popular neighborhoods with a sense of dread.

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Russian Military Helicopter Fires Rockets by Accident

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Russian Military Helicopter Fires Rockets by Accident

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Mert Aslandogan

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MOSCOW - At least one bystander narrowly escaped death when a Russian military helicopter accidentally fired rockets into a parking lot during a training exercise, a video released on Tuesday shows.

The video, from the online news portal 66.ru, shows two helicopters swooping over a field at treetop level before one suddenly fires off rockets that seem to hit a truck just a few yards from the bystander, who was standing on the parking lot, which is next to a firing range near St. Petersburg.

The misfire came during a major exercise, called Zapad 2017, or West 2017, though the timing of the strike was unclear. The exercises began Thursday and run through Wednesday.

Intended to flex Russian military muscle along the border with NATO countries to the west of Russia, the exercises have also highlighted some safety lapses. Already one Russian soldier has died from a ricocheting tank shell.

The Russian military issued a strongly worded statement denying that the helicopter mishap occurred on Monday, when President Vladimir V. Putin visited the firing range. But it did not dispute the authenticity of the video.

"The targeting system on one helicopter mistakenly acquired a target," the statement explained. "The strike by unguided rockets damaged a truck."

"All reports on social media of salvos fired at a crowd of journalists and a large quantity of gravely injured people are intentional provocations, or somebody's personal stupidity," the statement said. It did not clarify whether anyone was wounded in the misfire.

The news portal said an unidentified witness had provided the video, and suggested the mishap at the Luzhsky firing range occurred either Sunday or Monday. A longer video posted by another news site, Fontanka, shows civilian cars and a military truck damaged by shrapnel.

Zapad 2017 is a revival of a Soviet-era training maneuver that once included forces from the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet military alliance whose members have now joined NATO. Today, only the armies of Belarus and Russia take part.

The exercises have raised fears in Belarus that the Kremlin intends to leave behind some of its forces, creating a permanent military presence there.

Tensions are also high across the border, particularly in the Baltic states, where defense planners recall that similar large scale war games were used as by Russia to cover preparations for the invasion of Crimea and the establishment of a separatist zone in eastern Ukraine.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Russian Military Helicopter Accidentally Fires on a Parking Lot Near St. Petersburg. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Russian Military Helicopter Fires Rockets by Accident

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MOSCOW - At least one bystander narrowly escaped death when a Russian military helicopter accidentally fired rockets into a parking lot during a training exercise, a video released on Tuesday shows.

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Hima Dileep
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/americas/irma-barbuda-population-trnd/?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial

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40 million slaves in the world, finds new report

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40 million slaves in the world, finds new report

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Jaime Lim
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/19/world/global-slavery-estimates-ilo/index.html

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Baby Names: Do we judge people by their name?                        

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Baby Names: Do we judge people by their name?                        

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Hassanatou

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Parents-to-be can spend months searching for the perfect baby name. Some run their shortlist past friends and family, while others keep it secret for fear of their unusual choice becoming popular. What people think seems to matter - so do we judge people by their names?

Before filling in their birth certificate, parents want to know what first impression they are creating for their child. They want to know what their teacher or potential employer might think but not say, says Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts.

Baby names discussion pages on the parenting website have risen in popularity from five and a half million views in 2015 to seven million this year.

"More than anything else, people want to know what the crowd thinks about a particular name that they're not quite sure about," says Ms Roberts.
Baby names: Olivia most popular for girls Why it's hard to be a Kevin in France The girl with 140 names
Social psychologist Dr Elle Boag says there are certain names which foster stereotypes.

"We can all think of names which conjure up in our minds a hairdresser, an aristocrat or a criminal," says the senior lecturer at Birmingham City University.

"These stereotypes are passed on from our parents or associatively learned.

"If you have a negative experience of someone you will associate the characteristics of that person with the name and project them onto someone with the same name."

This happens with celebrities who make the front pages for the wrong reasons and even fictional characters from television shows, she says.

Author Sharon Bolton says she published books using only her initials after "suffering the stigma" of sharing a name with a character from BBC sitcom Birds of a Feather.

"The name Sharon became synonymous with background, character and lifestyle. To this day it conjures up images of Pauline Quirke slouching around Chigwell in a shell-suit," she wrote in the New Statesman.

Meanwhile, BBC Europe Correspondent Kevin Connolly wrote that his first name "more or less predestines you to being considered an idiot".

During the 1960s both Kevin and Sharon were in the top 15 of baby names registered but this year they did not make the top 100.
'Good solid name'
Names becoming "too popular" and your child being one of many in their class is one of the top concerns among Mumsnet members, says Ms Roberts.

" Previously people would choose a 'good solid name' that had the approval of many because many other people had chosen it," according to linguist Professor Richard Coates.

"But the social effect has been that the name has become a bit common and the assumption is the person will be common.

"Nowadays people have a desire for their child to be called something different or unique," he says.

Ms Roberts says Mumsnet members also wanted to know "whether unconventional names sound strong and dramatic or just plain silly".

Lalage Bown is an emeritus professor of adult and continuing education at the University of Glasgow, who says she has been judged on her unusual first name.

"A female professor is still these days not very well heard of and when people see or hear the name Professor Lalage they automatically think it's a man," she says.

"Once in Nigeria I was held off a plane because they said the passport was in the name of my husband."

But she says having an unusual name has had its advantages.

"When I was about six or seven we were staying for a holiday in Hayling Island in Hampshire and I made friends with a boy.

"About 40 years later I was working in Glasgow and my name was on my office door.

"This man who was passing by for a conference said to my secretary 'I know that name, it's someone I saw when I was seven years old' and we had a catch up."

Mrs Bown says her name is classical Greek meaning "chatterbox" but that her father had told her it meant a "sweet talker".

"I thought it would be interesting to become someone who was a good speaker," she says. "So I began practising public speaking about gender equality in parliament on a soap box in Hyde Park."

'Self-fulfilling prophecy'

Parents are aware of the notion that the name we give our children could have a bearing on what they grow up to become, says Ms Roberts.

The advice she gives is: "Consider whether the name would still work if the child in question became a high court judge."

A name is a powerful label, according to Ms Boag, as "it guides how people treat us and in turn how we behave."

She says: "You can become a self-fulfilling prophecy because children with these stereotyped names are treated in line with these stereotypes. They will therefore act upon the expectations society has of them.

"But we can reject that stereotype. New parents who are choosing baby names can teach their children that everyone should be judged as individuals and not on their names."

What's in a name?

Do you have a story about your name or your baby's name?

Tell us your thoughts and experiences using the form below and we could be in touch.

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Parents-to-be can spend months searching for the perfect baby name. Some run their shortlist past friends and family, while others keep it secret for fear of their unusual choice becoming popular. What people think seems to matter - so do we judge people by their names?

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Mexico Earthquake Kills Hundreds, trapping many under rubble

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Mexico Earthquake Kills Hundreds, trapping many under rubble

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Esther Kim
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/world/americas/mexico-earthquake.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

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Massa Assaad
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/us/hurricane-maria-puerto-rico.html?_r=0

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Scientists want to understand the color genes of Butterflies

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Scientists want to understand the color genes of Butterflies

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Tara Saadati
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/science/butterfly-wing-color-patterns-gene-editing.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

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Hurricane Maria Makes Landfall on Puerto Rico as Residents Seek Refuge

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Hurricane Maria Makes Landfall on Puerto Rico as Residents Seek Refuge

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Grace Lee

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The storm has brought new misery to a region that has seen two other powerful hurricanes in recent weeks. Residents of the Virgin Islands whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Irma two weeks ago were urged by the government to find new shelters to ride out Maria.

Hurricane #Maria nearing Puerto Rico as a category 4 hurricane with winds near 155 mph pic.twitter.com/dIBXRJtcVi
- Met Office Storms (@metofficestorms) Sept. 20, 2017

The storm began pounding the Virgin Islands on Tuesday evening, and a flash-flood alert was sent to residents' cellphones at 10:05 p.m., Gov. Kenneth Mapp said. He warned that hurricane-strength winds were likely to batter the islands until Wednesday morning.

The core of the storm passed south of the United States Virgin Islands, with the outer eyewall lashing St. Croix, the hurricane center said.

Maria had battered the island nation of Dominica a day earlier. Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit described the damage as "mind boggling" and wrote on Facebook that he had to be rescued after winds ripped the roof off his official residence. But little information has emerged since then, with the storm having taken out phone and power lines on Dominica.

Though the storm's maximum sustained winds dropped somewhat overnight, the authorities warned early Wednesday that it was still "potentially catastrophic," bearing "fury aimed at Puerto Rico and Vieques," a southeastern Puerto Rican island.

"Right now Maria is a bit weaker because the very tight circulation of the previous eyewall is suddenly disappearing as the outer eyewall replaces it," said Anthony Sagliani, meteorological operations manager at weather data company Earth Networks.

The storm will be "a powerful hurricane at landfall regardless but might not be as powerful as it could be," he said.

In the town of Cataño in northern Puerto Rico, several houses lost their zinc roofs and the roof of a church was ripped apart, Felix Delgado Montalvo, the town's mayor, said on a local radio station.

"My message now is not to leave your houses until the situation is over," he told listeners.

Residents of Puerto Rico braced for a more direct hit than from Irma, which killed three people and knocked out power to many. Widespread outages of Puerto Rico's creaky electrical network were expected again once Maria arrives in force Wednesday.

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Hurricane Maria Makes Landfall on Puerto Rico as Residents Seek Refuge

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The storm has brought new misery to a region that has seen two other powerful hurricanes in recent weeks. Residents of the Virgin Islands whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Irma two weeks ago were urged by the government to find new shelters to ride out Maria.

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Venezuela's 'Plan Rabbit' encounters 'cultural problem'

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Venezuela's 'Plan Rabbit' encounters 'cultural problem'

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Sasha Shin

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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has devised a "rabbit plan" to counter the economic war he says is being waged against his government by "imperialist forces".

The president urged crisis-hit Venezuelans to breed rabbits and eat them as a source of animal protein.

Venezuela is facing record levels of child malnutrition amid persistent food shortages.

An opposition politician said the plan was "a bad joke".

President Maduro revealed the idea on state television, saying that "for animal protein, which is such an important issue, a 'rabbit plan' has been approved because rabbits also breed like rabbits".
Read: Going hungry in Venezuela
The leader did say that the "rabbit plan" had not got off to a good start and the minister of urban agriculture, Freddy Bernal, said there had been a "cultural problem".

'People put bows on them'

President Maduro said rabbit kittens had been handed to 15 communities as part of a pilot project by Mr Bernal.

"When he came back, to his surprise he found people had put little bows on their rabbits and were keeping them as pets, it was an early setback to Plan Rabbit."

"A lot of people gave names to the rabbits, they took them to bed," Mr Bernal said.

The minister urged Venezuelans to start seeing rabbits "from the point of view of the economic war".

Amid laughter from fellow ministers at a cabinet meeting, he said that "we need a publicity campaign on radio, TV, in newspapers, in cartoons, everywhere, so that the people understand that rabbits aren't pets but two and a half kilos of meat".

The Venezuelan government routinely blames the "economic war" on everything from shortages of food to medicines and toiletries.

It alleges that "imperialist forces" are trying to cripple the country economically in order to oust its socialist leader but the opposition says government mismanagement is to blame.

Roots of the problem

Venezuela, which has the biggest proven oil reserves in the world, has historically relied heavily on imports for everything from food to basic staples.

But with the price of oil plummeting in recent years, the government's reserves have dwindled.

The situation is further exacerbated by rampant inflation and the fact that the sale of dollars is controlled by the state.

State-imposed price controls on basic staples meant that many businesses producing food closed because they were operating at a loss.

While the government has encouraged the creation of food co-operatives and urban agriculture, it has not been enough to cover Venezuelan's needs.

A survey carried out earlier this year suggested that three quarters of Venezuelans had lost an average of 8.7kg (19lb) in weight due to the economic crisis.

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'Eat rabbit' plan in trouble in Venezuela

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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has devised a "rabbit plan" to counter the economic war he says is being waged against his government by "imperialist forces". The president urged crisis-hit Venezuelans to breed rabbits and eat them as a source of animal protein. Venezuela is facing record levels of child malnutrition amid persistent food shortages.

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Trump's first UN speech met with criticism from some readers.

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Trump's first UN speech met with criticism from some readers.

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Seungmin Lee

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Donald Trump's first major speech at the United Nations has been denounced by some of the member nations he singled out for criticism.

The US president included Iran among "a small group of rogue regimes", and said the US would "totally destroy" North Korea if forced to do so.

Iran's foreign minister said: "Trump's ignorant hate speech belongs in medieval times", and not the UN.

North Korea has yet to respond to the president's threat of destruction.

Mr Trump's speech laid out a vision for a world filled with sovereign states which worked for the betterment of their citizens - but he spent large portions targeting what he called "rogue nations" which are "the scourge of our planet today".
Why Trump's UN rhetoric broke the mould
Washington has repeatedly warned North Korea over its weapons tests, which violate UN Security Council resolutions.

On Tuesday, Mr Trump criticised North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, saying: "Rocket man is on a suicide mission."

"If [the US] is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," he added.

Reuters news agency said one audience member covered his face with his hands, and that loud, startled murmurs filled the hall in response.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, who was observed crossing her arms, told the BBC: "It was the wrong speech, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience."

The American leader called on "the righteous many" to confront "the wicked few".

In his speech, he called Iran "a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy" whose "chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos".

He called the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers "one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into".

Mr Trump also targeted Venezuela, calling its government a corrupt "socialist dictatorship" - and warned that the US was prepared to take action against it.

Venezuela's Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza rejected what he called "threats".

"Trump is not the president of the world... he can not even manage his own government," he said.

Bolivian President Evo Morales - an ally of the Venezuelan government - tweeted: "I am not surprised that a multi-millionaire like Trump attacks socialism. Our struggle will always be ideological and pragmatic."

French President Emmanuel Macron, also speaking to the General Assembly, defended the nuclear deal with Iran. "Renouncing it would be a grave error," he said.

But Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed Mr Trump during his speech, saying the deal with Iran should be amended or scrapped altogether, and warned against the spread of Iranian influence in the Middle East.

Key messages from Donald Trump's speech

Can the world live with a nuclear North Korea?

Trump's contradictions

By Jonathan Marcus, BBC News

President Trump's speech was an eloquent exposition of his "America First" doctrine but at the same time contained some fulsome (and perhaps unexpected) praise for the United Nations as a body that can bring together sovereign states to tackle the world's problems.

In contrast to the focus on globalisation that has driven so much of foreign policy discussion since the 1990s, Mr Trump saw national sovereignty as the main pillar of the international system.

There was a nod to the old axis-of-evil theme. His rogues' gallery took in a predictable cast of North Korea, Iran and Venezuela.

Nonetheless Mr Trump's world view contained many contradictions. Where exactly is the boundary between national sovereignty and collective action? And does America's newfound foreign policy pragmatism extend just to calling for the return of democracy in Iran and Venezuela or actually for doing something practical about it?

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Donald Trump's first major speech at the United Nations has been denounced by some of the member nations he singled out for criticism. The US president included Iran among "a small group of rogue regimes", and said the US would "totally destroy" North Korea if forced to do so.

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North Korea is likely to fire more missiles after Trump's speech, experts say.

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North Korea is likely to fire more missiles after Trump's speech, experts say.

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Jason Lee
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-is-likely-to-fire-more-missiles-after-trumps-speech-experts-say/2017/09/20/1c97d158-9deb-11e7-8ed4-a750b67c552b_story.html?utm_term=.82756f6cbec7

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Huge earthquake in Mexico topples buildings, killing more than 200 people

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Huge earthquake in Mexico topples buildings, killing more than 200 people

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Arturo Colman

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41327593

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A strong earthquake has struck central Mexico, killing more than 200 people and toppling dozens of buildings in the capital, Mexico City.

At least 30 people, mostly children, died after a school collapsed in the capital, local media report.

The 7.1 magnitude quake also caused major damage in neighbouring states.

It struck shortly after many people had taken part in an earthquake drill, exactly 32 years after a quake killed thousands in Mexico City.

The country is prone to earthquakes and earlier this month an 8.1 magnitude tremor in the south left at least 90 people dead.

Though it struck a similar region, Tuesday's earthquake does not appear to be connected with the quake on 7 September, which was at least 30 times more energetic, the BBC's Jonathan Amos writes.

Where was worst hit?

The epicentre of the latest quake was near Atencingo in Puebla state, about 120km (75 miles) from Mexico City, with a depth of 51km, the US Geological Survey says.

The prolonged tremor hit at 13:14 local time (18:14 GMT) on Tuesday and sent thousands of residents into the streets.

Why did only some buildings collapse?

The race to help after the quake

An earlier death toll of nearly 250 was lowered to 217 by the country's national co-ordinator for civil protection:

Morelos state: 71 dead

Puebla state: 43 dead

Mexico City: 86 dead

Mexico state: 12 dead

Guerrero: 4 dead

Oaxaca: 1

As many as 37 people - 32 children and five adults - died when the Enrique Rébsamen elementary school collapsed in Mexico City's southern Coapa district, Efe news agency reports, quoting local media.

According to Mexican news site Reforma, 30 bodies have been found at the school and 22 people are missing.

Elsewhere, 15 people were killed when a church near Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano collapsed during Mass, Puebla's governor is quoted by Reuters news agency as saying. The volcano itself had a small eruption as a result of the tremor.

Alfredo del Mazo Maza, governor of the State of Mexico, said schools would be closed on Wednesday. He also ordered all public transport to operate services for free so that people could travel home.

What about survivors?

Emergency workers, aided by military personnel and volunteers, have been working through the night in the search for people trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

At the Enrique Rébsamen school, three people were rescued at about midnight, Reuters reports, adding that one child trapped under the debris was saved after oxygen was supplied through a tube.

At least 209 schools were affected by the quake, 15 of which have suffered severe damage, Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education says.

Buildings at 44 locations collapsed or were badly damaged, Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera told TV network Televisa. These are said to include a six-storey block of flats, a supermarket and a factory.

About two million people in the capital were left without electricity and phone lines were down. Officials warned residents not to smoke on the streets as gas mains could have been ruptured.

Some 70% of the electricity supply which went down has now been restored, Mexico's Federal Electricity Commission said.

Live updates

In pictures: Huge earthquake

Are Mexico's two earthquakes connected?

In a televised address, the president said an emergency had been declared for the affected areas and the military had been drafted in to help with the response.

He also urged residents whose properties were structurally sound to remain in their homes where possible to allow emergency services and those helping with rescue efforts to clear the streets.

Across Mexico City, teams of rescue workers and volunteers clawed through the rubble with picks, shovels and their bare hands.

"My wife is there. I haven't been able to communicate with her," Juan Jesus Garcia, 33, told Reuters, choking back tears next to a collapsed building.

"She is not answering and now they are telling us we have to turn off our mobile phones because there is a gas leak."
Have you been affected by the earthquake? If it is safe to do so you can email your story to haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk

Jennifer Swaddle, a teacher at the British International School in Mexico City, told the BBC that part of her classroom had collapsed.

"As we were leaving, the outside of my classroom wall fell, so there was a big pile of rubble. Luckily, fantastically, nobody was hurt, but it was incredibly frightening," she said.

History of deadly earthquakes

Can earthquakes be predicted?

What happened in 1985?

An earthquake drill was being held in Mexico City on Tuesday to mark the 32nd anniversary of a magnitude 8 quake that killed up to 10,000 people and left 30,000 others injured.

The severe tremor caused serious damage to Mexico City and its surrounding areas, with more than 400 buildings collapsed and thousands more damaged.

Correspondents say that residents may have mistaken earthquake alarms for part of the day of drills in the wake of the 1985 quake.

Mexico City is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with more than 20 million people living in the metropolitan area.

Why is Mexico so prone to earthquakes?

Mexico is one of the most seismically active regions in the world, sitting on top of three of the Earth's largest tectonic plates - the North American, Cocos and Pacific plates.

The latest tremor occurred near the boundary between the North American and Cocos plates, where the latter slides beneath the former.

According to the US Geological Survey, the country has seen 19 earthquakes of at least 6.5 magnitude within 155 miles of the epicentre of Tuesday's quake over the past century.

How has the world reacted?

Foreign leaders sent messages of support to Mexico as the scale of the disaster became clear:

US President Donald Trump, who has courted controversy with his plans for a border wall with Mexico, tweeted: "God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you"

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also tweeted his support following the "devastating news"

Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis, in New York for the UN General Assembly, expressed his "solidarity" with the Mexican people

Pope Francis said his thoughts and prayers were with the families of those who had lost loved ones in the "devastating" quake. "In this moment of pain I want to express my closeness and my prayer to all of the beloved Mexican population," the pontiff said at the Vatican

The Mexican government earlier issued the following guidance on what to do if a quake strikes in the country:

stay calm

find the evacuation route and meeting point

stay away from windows and objects that may fall

in case of emergency call 911

do not use lifts

The UK Foreign Office has said that those travelling to Mexico should follow the advice of the local authorities.

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Huge quake kills more than 200 in Mexico

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A strong earthquake has struck central Mexico, killing more than 200 people and toppling dozens of buildings in the capital, Mexico City. At least 30 people, mostly children, died after a school collapsed in the capital, local media report. The 7.1 magnitude quake also caused major damage in neighbouring states.

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French president Macron states that he is not making any concessions for the US regarding climate change.
http://time.com/4947689/macron-unga-climate-deal/?xid=homepage