science

Dramatic footage has been posted on X, capturing the moment a powerful blast rocked a luxury residential tower in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Number 1 trend on Weibo now: the terrible explosion that occurred in a residential building in Shenzhen’s Nanshan District today just after 14.30 after which 16 fire trucks and 80 fire rescue workers rushed to the scene. pic.twitter.com/6l3RJlFeN3

— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) December 11, 2024

Reuters reported:

The Shenzhen fire brigade said it had dispatched 16 fire trucks and 80 rescue personnel after receiving a report of the emergency at the compound.

…

According to state media The Beijing News, a preliminary investigation showed that a gas explosion on the 28th floor of the building caused the fire, while the exact cause of the explosion was still being investigated.

According to the Shanghai Morning Post, local officials have not confirmed casualty numbers, which remain unknown. At least one resident of the high-end condo building had fallen off after losing consciousness.

Footage of the aftermath was posted on X, including a shocking image of a person at the edge of their floor, attempting to escape the flames…

😞😞😞 pic.twitter.com/qLyM9eDVQd

— Deepman (@Deepman1024) December 11, 2024

Tragic high-rise explosion this afternoon in Shenzhen in a residential building (China).

At least one person died – a woman who fell down.

At least 4 floors were impacted. This happened in the Nanshan district. I can clearly see that building from my place.

My video in 🧵… pic.twitter.com/51S4EM8FY4

— Daniel Camilo (@DanielOlimac) December 11, 2024

An explosion occurred in an apartment at Phase II of Shenzhen Bay Yuefu in Nanshan District earlier this afternoon, Shenzhen Media Group reported.

The cause of the explosion and any potential injuries remain unclear. Authorities are conducting an emergency investigation into… pic.twitter.com/22FORvcJZG

— Shenzhen Daily (@szdaily1) December 11, 2024

SCMP noted that rescue teams have been evacuating residents throughout the building. 

Website Finder.com cited data from the National Christmas Tree Association showing that 43% of American households are expected to purchase a real tree this holiday season, with the average tree costing around $79.31—around $4 more than in 2023.

2020 marked a critical point in which artificial tree sales surpassed real tree sales for the first time. 

Separately, data from point-of-sale company Square shows that Christmas tree prices typically peak and are most expensive immediately after Black Friday and during the first half of December. Square noted that 50% deals occur in the days leading up to Christmas. 

Square Research Lead Ara Kharazian wrote in a note: “The cheapest time to buy a Christmas tree is right before Christmas. The best time is whichever day maximizes joy in your household.”

Over the past decade, Christmas tree supplies have been squeezed by a supplier bust originating back to the Global Financial Crisis, compounded by continued adverse weather conditions in the country’s top tree-growing regions.

“The root of the tight supply issue goes back to 2008 when an oversupply led growers to scale back planting,” Jill Sidebottom, a National Christmas Tree Association spokesperson, told CBS MoneyWatch.

Sidebottom added that adverse weather conditions, including the 2021 heat dome that destroyed trees across the Pacific Northwest, have exacerbated supply constraints in recent years.

Meanwhile, PNC Bank’s annual Christmas Price Index, which calculates the cost of “True Love’s” gifts from the classic holiday carol The Twelve Days of Christmas, rose by 5.4% compared to last year.

Data from Bankrate shows persistent inflation and high interest rates are expected to weigh on low/mid-tier consumers this holiday season. According to the financial services company, about one-third of holiday shoppers plan to spend less this year than last year.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – who had a Biden DOJ plant in his legal case against former President Donald Trump – is trying to ensure his hush money case doesn’t vanish into thin air as Trump prepares for his return to the White House.

According to court filings revealed Tuesday, Bragg’s office is fiercely opposed to dismissing the case outright but is open to pausing proceedings while Trump serves his second term as president.

The 82-page legal brief, prosecutors’ most detailed argument yet, stops short of recommending an explicit course of action but outlines several ways to keep the case alive. Among them: delaying sentencing until after Trump leaves office in 2029 or freezing the case while leaving the jury’s guilty verdict intact, The Hill reports.

“The extreme remedy of dismissing the indictment and vacating the jury verdict is not warranted in light of multiple alternative accommodations that would fully address the concerns raised by presidential immunity,” wrote Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy.

The filing comes as Trump, now president-elect, wages a legal battle to quash the 34 felony charges stemming from hush money payments to an adult film star. Trump’s lawyers claim his status as president-elect grants him immunity and demands immediate dismissal.

Prosecutors, however, aren’t buying it. They argue that immunity doesn’t apply until Trump is inaugurated, meaning the case could theoretically proceed to sentencing before January 20, 2025 — a prospect Trump has vowed to fight tooth and nail.

Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, will now decide the case’s fate, with a ruling expected any day.

A Legal Tightrope

The DA’s office acknowledged the complications of prosecuting a sitting president but stopped short of saying the case should be completely shelved.

Trump was convicted by a Manhattan Jury ‘of his peers’ on 34 counts of falsifying business records, however his reelection to the highest office in the land has put a damper on prosecutors’ plans.

Sentencing was initially scheduled for last month, only to be postponed indefinitely by Judge Merchan, making it increasingly unlikely Trump will face punishment anytime soon.

That would leave open the possibility that Trump could still proceed to sentencing in 2029, after he leaves office.

Alternatively, state prosecutors said the judge could terminate the case without tossing Trump’s conviction, noting a jury verdict removed the presumption of innocence, he was never sentenced and his conviction was “neither affirmed nor reversed” on appeal because of presidential immunity. -The Hill

Trump’s legal team is crying foul, claiming the prosecution disrupts his transition efforts and his ability to govern effectively. “Wrongly continuing proceedings in this failed lawfare case disrupts President Trump’s transition efforts and his preparations to wield the full Article II executive power authorized by the Constitution pursuant to the overwhelming national mandate granted to him by the American people on November 5, 2024,” Trump’s attorneys fumed in a recent filing.

Prosecutors hit back, accusing Trump of using delay tactics to muddy the waters. “Having filed those motions to dismiss and then sought repeated adjournments of sentencing to permit their determination by this Court, it is particularly brazen for defendant to argue that the Supremacy Clause bars the Court from taking any action on the motions defendant himself filed,” Conroy wrote.

After many years of a massive refugee influx into Europe from Middle East wars, especially going to back to the height of the 2015 migrant crisis, several European countries have ordered a halt to processing asylum applications from Syrians. This comes after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.

The UK, German, and Austria have confirmed they are freezing their applications. Germany alone has taken in some one million Syrians. Other countries halting their process includes Italy, Norway, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Finland.

Austria has gone the furthest, with country’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, saying, “I have instructed the ministry to prepare a program of orderly repatriation and deportation to Syria.”

London’s Home Office also confirmed it has “temporarily paused decisions on Syrian asylum claims whilst we assess the current situation.”

“We keep all country guidance relating to asylum claims under constant review so we can respond to emerging issues,” a spokesperson said.

German officials have also begun signaling that Syrians should make arrangements to return home. Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said on Monday that “Many refugees who have found protection in Germany now finally have hope of returning to their Syrian homeland and rebuilding their country.”

However, many Syrians would have greater fear of the new jihadist groups which took over Damascus, and might seek asylum given an al-Qaeda offshoot (HTS) now controls the country. This is especially true of Syrian Christians, Alawites, and Druze.

There’s no assurance that the situation will get any better in Syria under HTS rule, after the basically overnight collapse of an entire state system and its services. One NGO is speaking sense in terms of the realities on the ground:

“Chaos and violence continue to reign in Syria. Armed groups control large parts of the country and there is neither a stable government nor functioning state structures,” its spokesperson Tareq Alaows said in an email. “Much of the infrastructure has been destroyed and millions of people inside Syria are still displaced. Many cities are considered unsafe and there is no sign of a normalization of living conditions.”

Still, the presence of such large numbers of Syrian and other Middle East refugees has long unleashed a political firestorm in European politics. This is whey European officials are relieved that these massive changes in Syria provide an opportunity to send people back to their homeland.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

The epic collapse of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) over the past ten days and Assad’s cowardly flight from Damascus early Sunday morning herald the dawn of a new Syria.

The most immediate risk is that the entire country collapses just like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya before it.

That could create a black hole of instability from which innumerable global terrorist threats could emerge. Here’s what has to happen to prevent post-Assad Syria from experiencing that dark future:

1. The Army & The Security Services Must Remain Intact

The three preceding cases of state collapse were characterized by the army and the security services dissolving shortly after their foreign-backed regime change plots succeeded. In Syria’s case, the SAA still exists as an institution even though it’s on the retreat to who knows where, perhaps to the Alawite-majority coast. It’s therefore imperative that it doesn’t fall apart and cooperates with the non-terrorist anti-government opposition (NTAGO) to ensure that everything doesn’t spiral out of control.

2. Political Reform Must Begin Without Delay

Lavrov repeatedly emphasized during his interview at Saturday’s Doha Forum that that the Syrian government and the NTAGO must immediately implement UNSC Resolution 2254 from late 2015, which calls for drastic political reforms such as a new constitution and UN-supervised elections. It was Assad’s refusal to compromise with the NTAGO that ultimately led to this disaster. Prime Minister Jalali will reportedly serve as caretaker leader during the political transition, however, which is a positive sign.

3. The Russian-Written Draft Constitution Must Be Revived

It was assessed late last month that one of “The Five Reasons Why Syria Was Caught By Surprise” is because Assad rejected the Russian-written draft constitution from January 2017’s first Astana Summit, which was constructively critiqued in detail here at the time. With him out of the way, the multiple concessions that this document called for Damascus to make might finally become a reality, and they might even be taken further than its authors initially envisaged given the new circumstances.

4. The Alawite & Kurdish Minorities Must Be Protected

The Alawite coast remains outside the control of Turkish-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists for now as does the US-backed Kurdish-controlled northeast, both minorities of which must be protected from the jihadists. To that end, the aforesaid document could lay the basis for broad Bosnian-like federalized autonomy that could result in the coast falling under Russia’s “sphere of influence”, as could the northeast if Trump withdraws US forces from there like RFJ Jr. claimed that he plans to do.

5. The Interim Government Must Maintain Russia’s Bases

And finally, Russia can help the interim Syrian government fight against terrorists just like it helped Assad do from 2015 onward, so they must allow it to maintain its bases for that purpose. Their withdrawal would leave the Syrian state defenseless and the Alawite-majority coast at HTS’ mercy. In fact, since Russia’s intervention in Syria was driven by anti-terrorist motives, it might refuse to withdraw on national security pretexts and possibly midwife an independent coastal state to legitimize its continued presence.

Post-Assad Syria is on the brink of all-out collapse that could turn it into the world’s largest hotbed of terrorism if this process isn’t soon averted.

The most effective way to prevent this from happening is following the five pieces of advice from this analysis.

Anything less would greatly raise the chances of the worst-case scenario transpiring, but even in that event, Russia could still mitigate some of the damage if it continues bombing terrorists in Syria and supports the creation of an independent coastal state.