Tuesday, 3 August 2021, 11:25 am
A year on from the Beirut blast that killed 207
people, Josephine reflects on the crisis her baby boy has
been born into
One year ago, in the wake of the
August 2020 Beirut blast, I was asked to share my thoughts
as an expectant mother witnessing and living through a
national trauma. Twelve months on, this trauma feels
never-ending; it turns out the explosion was only the start
of more suffering for the people and children of Lebanon.
Here’s some of what I wrote on the night of August 4,
2020:
I am a soon-to-be mum, 39 weeks pregnant and
Tuesday, 3 August 2021, 11:15 am
The recent burst wastewater pipe in Paremata has
highlighted how important it is to look after the network
carrying sewage away from our homes.
Fixing this pipe
has become a priority but Porirua City Council is also
taking a longer view, as signalled recently in its Long-term
Plan (LTP), with investment in critical infrastructure and
harbour health among key priorities for the coming 30
years.
One of the major projects planned is a storage
tank to help stop wastewater overflowing into Porirua Stream
and Te Awarua-o-Porirua Harbour.
The proposed tank
will be located north of Porirua railway station, between
Tuesday, 3 August 2021, 9:33 am
Last night (2 August), the Mayor of Christchurch Hon.
Lianne Dalziel opened the “Space for Planet
Earth” Challenge at the Turanga Christchurch Library.
Also speaking were US. Embassy representative Wes Jeffers,
Xerra Senior Scientist Duncan Steel, and other collaborators
on video from U.S. earth observation satellite Company
Planet, and the Allen Coral Atlas project in collaboration
with National Geographic. The Challenge is powered by
Christchurch based social enterprise SpaceBase
Limited.
Mayor Dalziel Opens
Space for Planet Earth
The full Opening event
livestream can be found here:
The
regional space prize competition will run from August to
February 2022 to apply satellite data to address climate
Tuesday, 3 August 2021, 10:49 am
Responding to the video posted on TikTok by
jesuspreachingNZ, the Free Speech Union says the video shows
everything that is wrong with the Government’s vague and
dangerous hate speech proposals.
“New hate
speech laws haven’t even been written yet but police are
already out on our streets determining what hate speech is,
claiming the street preachers are apparently ‘very close
to the line’,” says Free Speech Union Campaign Manager,
Jonathan Ayling.
“Interestingly, the officer in the
video makes the point that what the preachers are saying is
‘subjective’. That is precisely the problem with these
Tuesday, 3 August 2021, 10:06 am
Hundreds of thousands of children in Lebanon are going to
bed hungry, Save the Children warned today, with parents
unable to pay for basics such as food, electricity and
medicine.
The gap in finances needed to buy basic
goods has skyrocketed 550 percent over the past year,
according to new analysis of the financial situation of
families in Beirut published a year after an explosion in
the port tore through the city.
Save the Children’s
analysis found that families from virtually all wealth
groups in the nation’s capital have been plunged deeper
into poverty, with children increasingly being sent out to