105 people had died in after several coaches of the Island Express fell into the Ashtamudi Lake in 1988

OM Norway Field Leader Willy Andre Meberg expresses condolences and prayer for the people of Norway.

There is a definite attempt to put the landslides on the backburner because news of them and climate change worry Wayanad's tourism and real estate businesses greatly.

There is a definite attempt to put the landslides on the backburner because news of them and climate change worry Wayanad's tourism and real estate businesses greatly. Whatever I experienced of Wayanad's 2024 by-elections; the July landslides were not a burning issue, observes Shyam G Menon.

Racism is a serious wrong that no one should argue. However, from an Orthodox Christian point of view, it is a far deeper wrong than is ever portrayed in the public debate. Join Michael as he explains why racism goes against the core of Christianity, and through story and anecdote describes why it seems is so hard for us to celebrate and embrace differences.

Join Michael as he discusses questions about why good people suffer, bad people thrive, and reconciling this with the goodness of God.

Fr. Apostolos invites the faithful to complete the journey from the gates of Jerusalem and Christ's triumphal entry to Golgotha and the borrowed tomb that could not hold the Lord of Life.

Fr. John Finley interviews Fr. Jon-Stephen Hedges, a director with the St. Brigid Fellowship and a chaplain with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department, about his role on the scene at the sites of the recent string of murders in Isla Vista, California.

'Our government stands with the families of the martyrs of Baldia Town.'

Have you hiked Mount Lafayette in N.H.'s Franconia Notch? We talk with N.H. author Ty Gagne, about his new book “The Last Traverse: Tragedy and Resilience in the Winter Whites." It’s the true story of two friends on a winter hike that goes awry, and the search-and-rescue efforts that keep it from becoming a bigger tragedy. What makes it especially relevant for this moment is the insight into how we make high-stakes decisions and manage risk in uncertain situations.

A major crisis broke out in Russia in the beginning of October 1993. It was the most serious crisis in post-Soviet history. Disagreements between President Boris Yeltsin and parliamentary leaders led to bloody massacre on the streets of Moscow.  The number of victims of the Black October crisis remains unknown even 30 years after. According to various departments and commissions, the number of victims varies from 124 to 158 people. Witnesses say, however, that hundreds were killed and thousands of others were injured.  After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the 1978 Constitution of the RSFSR was still in force vesting supreme powers on the Supreme Council and the Congress of People's Deputies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beslan. The head of state visited the City of Angels memorial complex — a large cemetery where 266 victims of the monstrous 2004 terrorist attack were buried. The attack that took place on September 1 at Beslan's School No. 1 claimed the lives of 334 people. September 2024 will mark 20 years since the tragedy. A monument on the territory of the complex, the Tree of Sorrow, was built in memory of the hostages who fell victim to the terrorist attack. There is also a monument to the fighters of the Alpha and Vympel special forces who died during the assault.

[Domestic] :
Memorial events are taking place across the country to honor the victims of the Itaewon crowd crush on Tuesday, the second anniversary of the tragedy.  Earlier in the day, a memorial event at the National Assembly brought together survivors, members of the bereaved families, the National Assembly ...

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A father and roofing contractor died while trying to save his son from drowning during a fishing trip on Oct. 5 in the Dallas area.

The Mueller Report From Business Insider, adapted by Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down", with illustrations by Chad Hurd, art director at "Archer."

Jessica Harris watches the Royal Shakespeare Company come close.

As the nation marks the one-year anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando this week, a group of experts on active shooter/hostile incident response will assemble at National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) headquarters to develop NFPA 3000, Standard for Preparedness and Response to Active Shooter and/or Hostile Events. It is expected that the initial standard will be completed by early 2018; then the public will have the opportunity to offer input for immediate review.

Review: Rediscovering Milan Kundera’s European tragedy The World Today mhiggins.drupal 28 March 2023

The Czech writer’s 40-year-old essay on the roots of Russia’s empire-building, ‘A Kidnapped West’, reads all too presciently, writes Stefan Auer.

A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe
Milan Kundera, Faber, £10

‘In November 1956, the director of the Hungarian News Agency, shortly before his office was flattened by artillery fire, sent a telex to the entire world with a desperate message announcing that the Russian attack against Budapest had begun. The dispatch ended with these words: “We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe.”’ Thus, Milan Kundera began his 1983 essay for the French journal Le Débat, reflecting on the 1956 Hungarian Uprising.

A seminal essay

The Czech author might well have written a near-identical passage about the fraught hours immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the event, Russian tanks failed to occupy Kyiv, unlike Budapest in 1956. Nevertheless, Faber has chosen this moment, 40 years later, to republish Kundera’s seminal essay on Europe and Russian aggression in its original translation for the New York Review of Books by Edmund White. How salient are its observations today?

The essay’s original French title, ‘Un Occident kidnappé ou la tragédie de l’Europe centrale’ (The Kidnapped West, or the Tragedy of Central Europe), described the fate of Hungary, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and, to an extent, Poland in 1980-81 at the hands of the Soviet Union. Owing to the Cold War division of Europe, the countries of Central Europe were denied their true destiny, Kundera thought, to be an integral part of the liberal, democratic West. Kundera himself fled Czechoslovakia for France in 1975.

The author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being might no longer be as well-known as he was at the height of his fame in the 1980s, but his novels and essays still deserve attention. So, it is pleasing to see Kundera’s masterpiece republished, even as it is awful to witness the enduring relevance of the questions it raises.

What did the Hungarian journalist mean when he declared his willingness to die for Europe, Kundera asked? That ‘Russians, in attacking Hungary, were attacking Europe itself. He was ready to die so that Hungary might remain Hungary and European’. The journalist did indeed die in the uprising.

It is a line that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his supporters abroad have echoed time and again: that Ukrainian soldiers are not just dying for their country, they are dying for Europe at large.

The ‘tragedy’ in Kundera’s essay was that the West didn’t care. ‘Europe hasn’t noticed the disappearance of its cultural home,’ Kundera wrote, ‘because Europe no longer perceives its unity as a cultural unity.’

In other words, as the cultural sphere in Central Europe continued to defy the political restrictions imposed by the Soviet empire, it embodied the western values of freedom and democracy more than the West itself did. The extent to which this analysis remains relevant today will prove decisive for Europe’s future.

As timely as ever

Kundera’s essay is as timely as ever but in ways that both vindicate and challenge his key arguments. His suspicion of Russia has been validated. His frustration about the indifference of the West less so. But the true tragedy of Ukraine would be if the West has not changed sufficiently. So far, the West appears to be doing enough to enable Ukraine to defend itself, but not enough to defeat the aggressor.

Faber has made an excellent decision in combining The Tragedy of Central Europe with a lesser-known text by Kundera: his 1967 speech to the Czech Writers’ Congress given the year before the ill-fated Prague Spring. In it, Kundera addressed what was to become a lifelong preoccupation: the fate of small nations. ‘For Czechs’, Kundera wrote, ‘nothing has ever constituted an indisputable possession – neither their language nor their belonging to Europe.’

Rather than reflecting the size of its territory or population, a small nation ‘is one whose very existence can be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear, and it knows it.’ In this way Ukraine, Europe’s largest country, apart from Russia, is fighting to avoid the fate of Kundera’s ‘small nation’.

Historically, the ‘small’ nations of Central Europe were threatened by both Germany and Russia. But after the Second World War, the threat was from the Soviet Union, which for Kundera was indistinguishable from Russia (tacitly including Ukraine). In its expansiveness, Russia was the opposite of Central Europe. While the latter was based on the principle of ‘the greatest variety within the smallest space’, the former represented ‘the smallest variety within the greatest space’.

In this sense, authoritarian communism was the fulfilment of Russian history, Kundera argued, writing that ‘Russian communism vigorously reawakened Russia’s old anti-western obsessions and turned it brutally against Europe’. Vladimir Putin’s Russia appears to build on these same pernicious impulses.

Kundera was widely criticized for observations in his essay that smack of civilizational racism (including by me) describing Russians as fundamentally different from us: ‘Russia knows another (greater) dimension of disaster, another image of space (a space so immense that entire nations are swallowed up in it), another sense of time (slow and patient), another way of laughing, living, and dying’.

In the aftermath of last month’s killing of an unarmed Minneapolis man in police custody, school systems are re-examining their own contracts with local police agencies.

In the aftermath of last month’s killing of an unarmed Minneapolis man in police custody, school systems are re-examining their own contracts with local police agencies.

After a week of heavy rains in Central America, the area is left in tragedy. OM Guatemala is desperate to help.

As a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of gun violence perpetrated on July 4, 2022, in Highland Park, Illinois, President Biden has ordered flags at all U.S. government buildings and facilities be flown at half-staff until sunset on July 9, 2022.    In concurrence with the President’s order, Governor Carney has ordered both the U.S. and Delaware flags at state buildings and facilities be flown at half-staff until sunset on July 9, 2022. 

In a tragic incident in Rawalpindi’s Shah Khalid Colony, three siblings, 2-year-old Zohan, 6-year-old Saira, and 7-year-old Faria, lost their lives after being confined in a box. The children were left alone at home, intensifying the sorrow of the situation. According to reports from a Rescue spokesperson, the parents, who were employed in different jobs—the ... Read more

The post Tragedy Strikes as Three Siblings Found Dead Locked in Box appeared first on Pakistan Tribune.

Spain's Climate Floods Tragedy in Pictures

The textile and garment makers have come out with a request to the government to withdraw its decision not to hold the Onam celebrations fearing loss of revenue to the entire trading fraternity

The Indian Embassy in Kuwait has set up a helpline for family members, and Prime Minister Modi has announced an ex-gratia relief of ₹2 lakh for the families of deceased Indian nationals

The Chief Minister directed authorities to provide the best possible medical care to the injured and announced a compensation of ₹5 lakh for the families of each deceased

The state George W Bush "liberated" is fighting its greatest post-Saddam crisis as Islamic militants are steadily improving their gains while marching on towards Baghdad

The new ‘code on occupational safety and health’ does not inspire confidence, as statutory obligations have been diluted

Declaring it has been “pained” by the Jodian Fearon situation, the embattled Andrews Memorial Hospital (AMH) is speaking out, saying it has never been approached for or rejected efforts at registration or certification since it began operating 76...

OM Norway Field Leader Willy Andre Meberg expresses condolences and prayer for the people of Norway.

In a communication to all states and union territories, the NDMA said due to several weeks of lockdown and the closure of industrial units, it is possible that some of the operators might not have followed the established standard operating procedures.

When watching Formula One, it can be easy to forget these drivers are taking their lives in their own hands.

In the wake of the gas leak at a factory in Visakhapatnam, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has issued detailed guidelines for restarting industries after the lockdown and the precautions to be taken for the safety of the plants as well as the workers. In a communication to all states and union territories, the NDMA said due to several weeks of lockdown and the closure of industrial units, it is possible that some of the operators might not have followed the established standard operating procedures. As a result, some of the manufacturing facilities, pipelines, valves may have residual chemicals, which may pose risk. The same is true for the storage facilities with hazardous chemicals and flammable materials, it said. The NDMA guidelines said while restarting a unit, the first week should be considered as the trial or test run period after ensuring all safety protocols. Companies should not try to achieve high production targets. There should be 24-hour sanitisation ..

Sixteen migrant workers sleeping on the rail tracks were crushed to death by a goods train in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district on Friday morning.

In the wake of the gas leak at a factory in Visakhapatnam, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has issued detailed guidelines for restarting industries after the lockdown and the precautions to be taken for the safety of the plants as well as the workers.

The NDMA guidelines said while restarting a unit, the first week should be considered as the trial or test run period after ensuring all safety protocols

Vizag gas leak: Chilling scenes bring back memories of Bhopal gas tragedy

This 1950 Federal Bureau of Investigation photo shows T. Dale Stewart, M.D., Curator of Physical Anthropology, in his office at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of […]

The post Tragedy, towers, and romance at the Smithsonian appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Troubles on the set and suspicious deaths helped to cultivate a nasty reputation for these cursed movies and famous legends.

For a time, this cow was the sole inhabitant of her own private island in Poland. She swam there to avoid slaughter.

Laura Prince's new book detailing the death of her brother has been called "insightful", "powerful" "vivid" "absorbing" and "spellbinding".

Mo Gawdat, founder of One Billion Happy and former Chief Business Officer at Google's X, spent years working in technological innovation. At Google's so-called "dream factory," he learned how to operationalize moonshot ventures aiming to solve some of the world's hardest problems. But then a personal tragedy — the loss of his son — set him on a new path. Gawdat launched a startup with the moonshot goal of helping one billion people find happiness. Gawdat is also the author of "Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy."

Vizag gas leak tragedy: Tension at LG Polymers plant as villagers protest demanding its closure