By Noah Brasseur
Welcome back to the news corner! Not a whole lot of good news this week, unfortunately.
First up, Turkey and Syria’s earthquake.
As of writing, more than 46,000 thousand civilians have died in the earthquake, with the count expected to rise. Many are still reported missing, and several million are anticipated to become homeless in the two countries.
Anger is prevalent in Turkey, as citizens demand answers for what they believe to be a slow and ineffective response to the crisis. In some areas, relief or aid did not arrive for days. Additionally, there is outcry over what some have called obvious corruption.
Essentially, Turkey has a strict set of building regulations to ensure buildings are earthquake-resistant. However, the government let several contractors get exceptions, and failed to enforce the codes in other places.
Turkey has since been issuing arrest warrants for people involved in the construction of collapsed buildings.
Syria has their own issues as well.
Being a nation in civil war, aid has been extremely slow to reach the northern parts of the nation most affected by the earthquake.
The north of the country is controlled by anti-government rebels. As such, Syrian leaders have been reluctant to allow in supplies for relief. They have recently allowed more resources to flow into the region, but only after pressure from the United Nations.
Vox has a good breakdown on how the earthquake got so bad here.
Up next, the Ohio train derailment.
On Feb. 3, a train running through a small town in Ohio with a population under 5,000 derailed. The accident caused a fire that spanned the width of the 50 cars.
Some of the cars contained a material called vinyl chloride, which is a highly dangerous cancer-causing agent. Its permissible exposure limit is one part per million. Basically, if the air is thought of as one million dots, this chemical can only be a singular dot to be safe.
Concerns were soon raised that the fire might cause the train to explode, creating a bigger problem. Authorities decided to start a controlled burn of the chemicals to prevent it.
The Environmental Protection Agency has said that they have not detected enough of the chemicals in the air to cause concern, but locals have challenged this conclusion.
Thousands of fish in nearby rivers have died following the derailment, which officials have acknowledged. However, they maintain that land-dwelling animals have not been affected.
The locals disagree. Stories have circulated online of several pets dying unexpectedly following the accident, including a young cat who had been perfectly healthy at a checkup a few weeks prior.
The Washington Post has a good timeline of the events here.
Finally, a bit of political news.
For those unaware, Fox News has been in an ongoing lawsuit against Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion hit Fox with a defamation lawsuit, saying the news organization had damaged their business by spreading the claim their voting machines were rigged.
Recently, a document from the ongoing legal proceedings was obtained by several news outlets.
Those files outlined evidence that some of Fox’s most famous hosts, including Tucker Carlson, may not have believed some of the claims they were spreading on air.
According to recovered texts, Carlson wrote that “Sidney Powell is lying” regarding her claims that she had evidence of election fraud.
Dominion alleges that Fox lost viewership amongst their base after calling the 2020 election for Biden, and attempted to recoup their losses by spreading the theory the election had been somehow stolen in the days after.
There is some legitimate backing for this. After election night, Fox’s ratings fell several places, only to rocket back up in the following weeks.
The voting machine company says that Fox continued to keep up their attacks on the election, even while knowing the claims were false.
In one instance, Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich tweeted that there was no evidence of voter fraud. Internal communications from the news organization showed an attempt to shut her down.
“Please get her fired,” Carlson texted.
For more on this, check out this AP News article.
