Mallorca-sized iceberg breaks off from Antarctica, becoming the world’s biggest floating ice mass

19 May, 2021 12:26

FILE PHOTO. © Reuters / Alister Doyle

A gigantic iceberg, measuring over 4,000 square km (1544 square miles), has broken off the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The iceberg, called A-76, is now the largest floating ice mass in the world.

The size of the enormous iceberg rivals many large islands worldwide and is bigger than the Spanish resort island of Mallorca, which measures ‘just’ 3,667 square km. The iceberg is quite long and narrow – it is around 170 km in length and only 25 km wide. 

The breakage was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, with satellite imagery showing the ice mass split off from the ice sheet in the Weddell Sea in a nearly perfect straight line. The new iceberg has now become the world’s largest floating ice mass, taking the title from A-23A, which is also floating in the Weddell Sea. The previous record-holder is estimated to be some 3880 sq km in size – which is also bigger than Mallorca. 

A-23A might regain its title of the largest floater before it melts away, however, as it’s more conveniently shaped – it’s a rough square – and is less susceptible to breakage than the A-76.

The birth of the new iceberg comes shortly after a true social media star – the A-68 gigantic tabular iceberg – finally melted away. The iceberg, which at the time of its break-off measured some 5,800 square km, used to be one of the largest floating ice sheets ever reordered.

It broke off Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf back in July 2017 and embarked on a three-and-a-half-year journey into the South Atlantic, which was closely monitored by satellites. By April this year, the iceberg finally disintegrated, leaving no pieces large enough to track.

https://www.rt.com/news/524210-iceberg-breaks-off-antarctica/

What’s cooking today: Tea-time coffee cake

 

Tea-time coffee cake

By Tony Jackman• 19 May 2021

No bells and whistles here, just an old-fashioned cake with a coffee-infused buttercream topping. The recipe is intended for a springform cake tin.

Ingredients

2 cups (500 ml) cake flour

2 tsp/ 10 ml baking powder

¼ tsp/ 1 ml salt

¾ cup/ 180 ml butter at room temperature

1 ¼ cups/ 310 ml sugar

3 large eggs

60 ml/ ¼ cup strong coffee made with 1 ½ Tbsp quality instant coffee (no, not Ricoffy) and 1 Tbsp boiling water

½ cup/ 120 ml milk 

1 tsp/ 5 ml vanilla extract

Buttercream icing:

1 ½ Tbsp quality instant coffee

1 Tbsp boiling water

225 g icing sugar

100 g soft butter

Method

Prepare the coffee and leave it to cool. 

Preheat the oven to 180℃ with the rack in the middle.

Grease a 20 cm springform cake tin and cut a round of parchment paper to fit in the bottom. I sprayed the paper as a precaution against sticking, though it’s probably not necessary.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a baking bowl with a wooden spoon. I’m an old-fashioned boy and I still do it mom’s way, but of course you can choose your own preference. I just love the motion of it, and watching the yellow turn pale; for me it’s truly one of the joys of baking.

Add the eggs to the batter one at a time, beating each one in.

Mix the 120 ml milk with the 60 ml/ ¼ cup cold coffee.

Sift the flour into another bowl. Stir the baking powder and salt into it.

Add the dry mixture and the milk/coffee mixture to the batter a little at a time, alternating, and beating well each time.

Pour the batter into the prepared springform cake tin and bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until the top has browned and an inserted skewer comes out clean.

For the icing:

Stir the boiling water and coffee and cool to room temperature. Beat the icing sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Stir in the cooled coffee.

Cool the cake on a rack, then release the springform catch and peel away the paper from beneath the cake. Slice it in half in the middle and spread half the buttercream in the middle and the rest on top. 

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-19-whats-cooking-today-tea-time-coffee-cake/

QUEEN ELIZABETH 'DEVASTATED' BY PUPPY'S DEATH

 

QUEEN ELIZABETH 'DEVASTATED' BY PUPPY'S DEATH: REPORT

Prince Andrew reportedly gave his mother two corgi puppies in February as a surprise to cheer her up after her 99-year-old husband Philip went into hospital.

Queen Elizabeth II is grieving the death of one of two puppies that she was given shortly before her husband Prince Philip died, according to a report on Wednesday.

"The Queen is absolutely devastated," The Sun tabloid quoted a Windsor Castle source as saying. "Everyone concerned is upset as this comes so soon after she lost her husband."

The Queen lost her husband of 73 years in April and had found solace in walking five-month-old Fergus, who died unexpectedly, and Muick most days on the grounds of Windsor Castle, the newspaper said.

Prince Andrew reportedly gave his mother the two corgi puppies - a cross between dachshunds and the queen's beloved corgis breed - in February as a surprise to cheer her up after 99-year-old Philip went into hospital that month. He died on 9 April.

The 95-year-old Queen used to be a keen breeder of corgis, a short-legged Welsh breed. She has given that up, citing her advancing age, but The Sun said she was thrilled by the new puppies.

Fergus was named after the Queen's uncle, Fergus Bowes-Lyon, who was killed in World War I, The Sun said.

Muick is the name of a loch on the Scottish royal estate at Balmoral. The Queen still has one older corgi called Candy.

https://ewn.co.za/2021/05/19/queen-elizabeth-devastated-by-puppy-s-death-report

Farm attack: Farmer hospitalised after assault by 5 attackers, nothing stolen, Warden

 

South Africa: Farm attack: Farmer hospitalised after assault by 5 attackers, nothing stolen, Warden

Oorgrens veiligheid

May 18, 2021

Farm attack: Farmer hospitalised after assault by 5 attackers, nothing stolen, Warden

A farm attack took place on 17 May 2021, at 17:00, on a farm 15 km South of Warden near Harrismith in the Free State province of South Africa. A farmer Mr. Jansen van Rooyen was overpowered and assaulted by five attackers.

It was reported that nothing was stolen during the attack.

After the assault the attackers fled on foot in the direction of the N3.

The farmer was taken to a hospital in Harrismith for medical attention.

The police are investigating the attack but there have been no arrests.

There is no other information available at this stage.

Read about more farm attacks here

Information supplied by Oorgrens veiligheid

South Africa Today – South Africa News

https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/free-state/farm-attack-farmer-hospitalised-after-assault-by-5-attackers-nothing-stolen-warden/

Farm attack, 3 attackers ambush family, rob firearms, Elandsfontein, Fochville

 

South Africa: Farm attack, 3 attackers ambush family, rob firearms, Elandsfontein, Fochville

Oorgrens veiligheid

May 18, 2021

Farm attack, 3 attackers ambush family, rob firearms, Elandsfontein, Fochville

A farm attack took place on the evening of 17 May 2021, at 19:00, in the Elandsfontein area just West of Fochville in the Gauteng province of South Africa. Mr Gerrie Brits, his wife Susan and their son arrived back on the farm from town and were ambushed by three attackers.

The attackers forced them into the home and demanded firearms and money. They hit Mr.Brits alongside his head with an object and forced him to open the safe.

The attackers fled the scene in the families white double cab Ford Ranger bakkie with three firearms, a shotgun and two hand guns, a laptop, cell phones and cash.

The vehicle was found about an hour after the attack in Kokosi.

Police are investigating, but there have been no arrests.

There is no other information available at this stage.

Read about more farm attacks here

Information supplied by Oorgrens veiligheid

South Africa Today – South Africa News

https://southafricatoday.net/south-africa-news/gauteng/farm-attack-3-attackers-ambush-family-rob-firearms-elandsfontein-fochville/

 

Delingpole: ‘You Can Be Anything in Britain Except a Christian’

40

REMY GABALDA/AFP via Getty Images

JAMES DELINGPOLE

17 May 2021

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP was responding to what he saw as a sneering attack on his newly-elected party leader Edwin Poots by the BBC.

Poots, the new DUP leader, is a believing Christian. But the way the mainstream media has been reporting it you’d think this were freakier than if he were a practising Satanist.

Sky News couldn’t resist warning us that “in his past” Poots has “courted controversy” because of his “strongly held views on issues like evolution and homosexuality.”

Channel 4 News, meanwhile, felt compelled to mention that “Poots believes in Creationism, that the world is 6,000 years old”.

And in a report for BBC Newsnight, correspondent Nicholas Watt mentioned twice that Poots is a “Creationist”, while presenter Faisal Islam added for good measure that he is a “Creationist who once banned donations of blood from gay men.”

This appears to be what prompted Ian Paisley’s subsequent tirade on Newsnight to Faisal Islam:

The BBC want to lambast a man because he happens to be a man of faith. They want to take the Mickey out of his religion. You wouldn’t do that if he was a Muslim. You wouldn’t do that if he was of any other religion. But you can take the Mickey out of his Christian faith. you should be ashamed of yourself.

Paisley is right. There is no way on earth that Faisal Islam would preface an interview with, say, Sadiq Khan, by making light of the Muslim belief in Gabriel flying Mohammed around Heaven on a winged horse to meet Allah, Adam and Moses.

Indeed, were you to search the BBC news archives I doubt you’d find a single instance of a BBC interviewer even hinting to a Muslim that there was anything unhealthy about Islamic attitudes towards homosexuality.

The mainstream British broadcast channels all seem to be united in their loathing for Christianity — and routinely persecute politicians of faith.

Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, for example, was effectively hounded out of his job because the media kept pestering him with questions about whether he believed homosexual sex was a sin.

In the days before he settled for being just a stooge of the Boris Johnson administration, when he still actually counted for something and believed in something, Leader of the House Jacob Rees Mogg, too, was endlessly tormented by journalists because of his profound Catholic faith.

The BBC’s Jo Coburn once asked him whether his religious belief was a “barrier to holding high office” — which she would certainly never have asked of a devout Muslim, Sikh, or Jew.

Rees-Mogg — who still had some fire in his loins in those days — asked: “Why do you pick on these views of the Catholic Church?” He added: “Isn’t this stretching into religious bigotry?”

Most certainly it is. But this bigotry is so routine, so widespread, so unthinking that none of these MSM stooges such as Faisal Islam are even aware that they are doing it.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/05/17/you-can-be-anything-in-britain-except-a-christian/

Commentary: Does Hamas have rocket stockpiles in Sinai?

The IDF bombs hundreds of targets in Gaza, but Hamas continues to fire rockets. This situation raises the question of whether Hamas is using Egyptian territory for storing emergency reserves

 By Ami Rojkes Dombe , Israel Defense,  16/05/2021

https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/49898

The continuous barrages of rockets by Hamas into southern and central Israel, despite several days of continuous bombings of Gaza by the IDF, has sparked speculation regarding the organization's rocket storage network. On one hand, the IDF claims that it is striking rocket stockpiles in Gaza. On the other hand, Hamas continues to launch hundreds of rockets almost all day, every day, at areas ranging from southern to central Israel.      

This dissonance raises questions regarding the rocket storage sites of Hamas. According to one theory, Hamas scattered its rocket stockpile in hundreds of hidden locations in Gaza, some underground and others in the homes of residents, in order to make it difficult for the IDF to strike the organization's stocks.

According to a second theory, it is possible that Hamas is using the territory of the Sinai Peninsula for logistical support of its rocket network. Israel relinquished the Philadelphi Route, which gave Hamas an underground connection to the territory of Sinai. In other words, in theory at least, Hamas can set up rocket storage facilities in the territory of Sinai, far from the IDF, and transport the rockets in times of emergency such as now.        

The theory regarding Sinai raises another question as to whether Egypt is turning a blind eye to Hamas activity in Sinai. There were previous claims made online regarding Israeli-Egyptian cooperation in Sinai, but the amount of Hamas rockets and launchers does not leave doubt regarding use by Hamas of Egyptian territory for logistics.      

If you look at a map of Gaza, you will see that it is bordered by Israel to the north and to the east, and by the sea to the west. So the southern border is the only one that can be used for transferring raw materials, rocket engines, rocket assembly kits or even entire rockets to Gaza. It should be said that despite the peace between Egypt and Israel, and despite Israel allowing Egypt to violate the peace agreements by placing military forces in Sinai, Hamas is still able to produce thousands of rockets and hundreds of launchers without interference.

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