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BANGKOK (AP) A massive explosion at a chemical factory on the outskirts of Bangkok early Monday killed at least one person, injured dozens more and damaged scores of homes, while prompting the evacuation of a wide area over fears of poisonous fumes and the possibility of additional denotations.

Dense clouds of black smoke continued to billow from the site late in the day. Winds shifted and started blowing toward the citys center, and evacuation centers were set up in a school and a government office for those forced from their homes.

The fire broke out at around 3 a.m. at a foam and plastic pellet manufacturing factory just outside Bangkok near Suvarnabhumi Airport, with the explosion blowing out windows of surrounding homes and sending debris raining from the air.

The blast could be heard for kilometers (miles) and surveillance video from a nearby house captured the bright flash and boom, followed by damage to the home and the one next door from the shockwaves.

The main blaze at the Ming Dih Chemical factory had been brought under control by mid-morning, but an enormous tank containing the chemical styrene monomer continued to burn, said local disaster prevention official Chailit Suwannakitpong. Officials said many tons of styrene monomer were stored on the site.

Helicopters tried to navigate close enough through the thick black smoke to dump fire retardant onto the fire, with little apparent success.

The Prime Ministers Office ordered that rain clouds be seeded if possible in the hope that a downpour would help bring the pollutants out of the sky, then reversed the command over concerns it would lead to toxic chemicals contaminating the citys rivers and canals.

Authorities said 62 people had been injured, including 12 involved in firefighting and rescue efforts, and one person had been confirmed dead.

Styrene monomer, a hazardous liquid chemical used in the production of disposable foam plates, cups and other products, can produce poisonous fumes when ignited. Chailit said officials were trying to move all people out of the area, including doctors and patients from the neighborhoods main hospital where many of the casualties were initially treated, over fear of the fumes and the possibility of more explosions.

The chemical itself also emits styrene gas, a neurotoxin, which can immobilize people within minutes of inhalation and can be fatal at high concentrations. Last year in the Indian city of Visakhapatnam, a leak of styrene gas from a chemical factory killed 12 people and sickened more than 1,000.

Authorities were carefully monitoring the air in the area around the fire, and Pollution Control Department official Thalerngsak Petchsuwan urged anyone remaining in the vicinity to close their doors and windows to avoid inhaling any fumes.

Those who breathe it in can get dizzy and vomit and it might cause cancer in the long term, he said.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of an area 5 kilometers (3 miles) around the scene.

Firefighters could be seen in photos from Thai media climbing through the twisted steel wreckage of the complexs warehouses to get their hoses close enough to the flames as they fought to control the blaze. The badly charred body of the only known fatality identified by officials as an 18-year-old volunteer firefighter lay face down among the wreckage, his head resting on his right forearm.

The area around the factory is a mixture of older industrial complexes and newer housing developments that were built after the opening of the airport in 2006.

Jaruwan Chamsopa, who lives about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the factory, said the loud explosion in the middle of the night broke her houses windows, damaged the roof and caused parts of the ceiling to tumble down. She said the windows of every house on her road were broken as well.

I was shocked when the explosion took place, she told The Associated Press. I came out and saw a big fire in the sky.

She said she and her husband and mother didnt evacuate until 8 a.m.

I didnt realize that it would be such a dangerous chemical that I have to evacuate, she said. I am worried because the black smoke reached my house.

There was no immediate word on what might have caused the fire in Bang Phli district, and the company was not reachable by phone.

The initial explosion shook the terminal building at Suvarnabhumi, Bangkoks main international airport, setting off alarms.

Airport officials said no flights had been canceled but they were continuing to monitor the situation and were prepared to put in place contingency plans in case of emergency.

___

Associated Press writers Chris Blake, Tassanee Vejpongsa and Chalida Ekvittayavechnukul contributed to this report.

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Evacuations ordered after Thai chemical factory explodes - The Associated Press

Spain's 5-3 win over Croatia in extra time of their Euro 2020 round-of-16 tie had everything: there was a "You won't believe your eyes" own goal, there was a spirited comeback in the final moments of normal time, and there was a heart-warming story of redemption.

In other words, it was the game of the tournament so far.

The drama began in the 20th minute. That's when Pedri played a long backpass that evaded goalkeeper Unai Simon and gently rolled into the Spain net to put Croatia in front.

But Spain would dig themselves out of that hole. Pablo Sarabia equalised 18 minutes later, and Chelsea captain Cesar Azpilicueta headed the 2012 European champions into the lead just shy of the hour mark. Ferran Torres added a third in the 76th minute, and La Roja were out of sight, right?

Not quite.

Five minutes from full-time, Mislav Osic earned Croatia a consolation goal, but surely Spain would see out the game's final few minutes. And then Mario Pasalic scored again in the second minute of stoppage time, levelling the score and setting off euphoria among Croatia's fans.

And so, to extra time we went. And it was there that the game was put to bed, and by none other than Alvaro Morata.

The Juventus striker has started all four of Spain's games at Euro 2020, scoring once in the process. But more notably he's accumulated a number of glaring misses, making him the target of widespread ridicule on social media.

That made his eventual winner all the sweeter.

The rest is here:
Croatia vs. Spain was Euro 2020's game of the tournament: How social media reacted - ESPN

A view from the South Rim trail at Big Bend National Park on a hazy day.

Texas is required to come up with a plan to reduce haze in its national parks, but critics say the proposed plan wont do enough to improve air quality.

The requirement is part of the EPA's Regional Haze Rule, which aims to improve air quality on federal lands. In other states, plans to address haze have often included stricter emissions controls for industrial plants, requiring older plants to implement better pollution control technology.

But for the second time, state environmental regulators at the TCEQ are set to approve a plan Wednesday with no new emissions control measures, citing cost concerns.

More than a decade ago, Texas submitted its initial Regional Haze Plan, which led to a legal back and forth between the EPA and the state over what the plan should include. Now, an updated version is due.

While the latest iteration has the approval of a few industry groups, numerous environmental organizations, alongside officials from the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service, have filed comments against Texas' plan, saying it doesn't go far enough.

Dan Cohan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University, is among those who filed public comments against the proposed plan. Houston Public Media spoke with Cohan to learn more about how the plan impacts Houston and why it's likely to turn into a legal battle with the EPA again.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I know the Regional Haze Plan addresses haze in Big Bend National Park on the other side of the state so how does it impact Houston?

The same pollution that causes haze and obstructs visibility in the national parks is the same pollution thats deadliest for us to breathe in our cities. So anything that we do to reduce haze also makes us healthier, wherever we live.

What are some of the specific air pollutants that it focuses on?

The main cause of haze is something known as PM 2.5, which means fine particulate matter, so tiny particles that can really be made of anything floating in the air. A large amount of this comes as sulfate particles because Texas has more coal power plants that dont have scrubbers than any other state in the country. (Scrubbers are air pollution control devices that help remove particulate matter.)

How does Texas' proposed plan compare to other states?

I was working on Georgias plan 15 years ago, and Georgia and other neighboring states all made plans to require modern emission control technologies at their facilities. Texas managed to avoid doing that the first time around, and now is proposing to continue doing nothing for a decade to come.

What additional emissions controls would you like to see added?

The biggest problem is that we have several coal power plants that still dont have any scrubbers at all to control their sulfur pollution. And that sulfur pollution is a leading cause of the particles in the air that cause the haze and that hurt our health. All new coal power plants since around 1980 have been required to have scrubbers this is 40-year-old technology thats just a given. Whats happened is that the 1970s plants have been grandfathered in without scrubbers at all. The Regional Haze Rule is supposed to go back to those grandfathered, old power plants and bring them up to modern pollution control levels. Thats whats happened in almost every other state in the country, and Texas really stands alone in having resisted those sorts of scrubbers.

Do you think were likely to see more conflict between the TCEQ and the EPA over the latest plan?

This was a big conflict between TCEQ and EPA over the past decade when EPA kept insisting that there be a stronger plan from Texas. Under President Obama, EPA actually stepped in and issued its own federal plan for Texas after rejecting what Texas had done. But before that federal plan took effect, the Trump administration came in and wiped it out. And so weve been left in this limbo, ping-ponging around between what the state and what EPA wants to do. This plan that TCEQ is going to vote on on June 30 sets up the next round of that. This is another attempt by Texas to do nothing and I would not at all be surprised to see EPA reject this again, and perhaps well see another EPA-issued plan for the state.

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Excerpt from:
Texas Proposed Plan To Reduce Haze In Its National Parks Falls Short, Critics Say - Houston Public Media

As Britney Spears made an anguished speech in court about the control exerted over her life for years, fans, observers and fellow pop stars responded with shock to the details that trickled out from the hearing in Los Angeles, sending messages of support and solidarity.

In the hearing, Ms. Spears said she believed that the conservatorship a legal arrangement that controls her personal life and finances was abusive and that she had not been able to live a full life.

Midway through Wednesdays hearing, after Ms. Spears had finished her prepared testimony, the singer Mariah Carey urged her to stay strong.

Devoted fans on social media who have long suspected that Ms. Spears was not happy with the arrangement commended Ms. Spears for speaking up and reacted with disgust to parts of her account.

Ms. Spears also received supportive words on social media from the singers Brandy, Tinashe and Liz Phair, who wrote that declaring a woman mad to gain control of her assets was the oldest trick in the playbook of the patriarchy.

The singer Halsey wrote on Twitter that she admired Ms. Spearss courage in speaking up and hoped that she would be freed from the abusive system.

Continued here:
Mariah Carey Urges Britney Spears to 'Stay Strong' on Twitter - The New York Times

News Release

Thursday, June 24, 2021

NIH scientists discover that bacteria may drive activity of many hallmark aging genes in flies.

To better understand the role of bacteria in health and disease, National Institutes of Health researchers fed fruit flies antibiotics and monitored the lifetime activity of hundreds of genes that scientists have traditionally thought control aging. To their surprise, the antibiotics not only extended the lives of the flies but also dramatically changed the activity of many of these genes. Their results suggested that only about 30% of the genes traditionally associated with aging set an animals internal clock while the rest reflect the bodys response to bacteria.

For decades scientists have been developing a hit list of common aging genes. These genes are thought to control the aging process throughout the animal kingdom, from worms to mice to humans, said Edward Giniger, Ph.D., senior investigator, at the NIHs National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the senior author of the study published in iScience. We were shocked to find that only about 30% of these genes may be directly involved in the aging process. We hope that these results will help medical researchers better understand the forces that underlie several age-related disorders.

The results happened by accident. Dr. Ginigers team studies the genetics of aging in a type of fruit fly called Drosophila. Previously, the team showed how a hyperactive immune system may play a critical role in the neural damage that underlies several aging brain disorders. However, that study did not examine the role that bacteria may have in this process.

To test this idea, they raised newborn male flies on antibiotics to prevent bacteria growth. At first, they thought that the antibiotics would have little or no effect. But, when they looked at the results, they saw something interesting. The antibiotics lengthened the flys lives by about six days, from 57 days for control flies to 63 for the treated ones.

This is a big jump in age for flies. In humans, it would be the equivalent of gaining about 20 years of life, said Arvind Kumar Shukla, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow on Dr. Ginigers team and the lead author of the study. We were totally caught off guard and it made us wonder why these flies took so long to die.

Dr. Shukla and his colleagues looked for clues in the genes of the flies. Specially, they used advanced genetic techniques to monitor gene activity in the heads of 10, 30, and 45-day old flies. In a previous study, the team discovered links between the age of a fly and the activity of several genes. In this study, they found that raising the flies on antibiotics broke many of these links.

Overall, the gene activity of the flies fed antibiotics changed very little with age. Regardless of their actual age, the treated flies genetically looked like 30-day old control flies. This appeared to be due to a flat line in the activity of about 70% of the genes the researchers surveyed, many of which are thought to control aging.

At first, we had a hard time believing the results. Many of these genes are classical hallmarks of aging and yet our results suggested that their activity is more a function of the presence of bacteria rather than the aging process, said Dr. Shukla.

Notably, this included genes that control stress and immunity. The researchers tested the impact that the antibiotics had on these genes by starving some flies or infecting others with harmful bacteria and found no clear trend. At some ages, the antibiotics helped flies survive starvation or infection longer than normal whereas at other ages the drugs either had no effect or reduced the chances of survival.

Further experiments supported the results. For instance, the researchers saw similar results on gene activity when they prevented the growth of bacteria by raising the flies in a completely sterile environment without the antibiotics. They also saw a similar trend when they reanalyzed the data from another study that had raised flies on antibiotics. Again, the antibiotics severed many of the links between aging and hallmark gene activity.

Finally, the team found an explanation for why antibiotics extended the lives of flies in the remaining 30% of the genes they analyzed. In short, the rate at which the activity of these genes changed with age was slower than normal in flies that were fed antibiotics.

Interestingly, many of these genes are known to control sleep-wake cycles, the detection of odorants, and the maintenance of exoskeletons, or the crunchy shells that encase flies. Experiments on sleep-wake cycles supported the link between these genes and aging. The activity of awake flies decreased with age and this trend was enhanced by treating the flies with antibiotics.

We found that there are some genes that are in fact setting the bodys internal clock, said Dr. Giniger. In the future, we plan to locate which genes are truly linked to the aging process. If we want to combat aging, then we need to know precisely which genes are setting the clock.

This study was supported by the NIH Intramural Research Program at the NINDS.

This press release describes a basic research finding. Basic research increases our understanding of human behavior and biology, which is foundational to advancing new and better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Science is an unpredictable and incremental process each research advance builds on past discoveries, often in unexpected ways. Most clinical advances would not be possible without the knowledge of fundamental basic research. To learn more about basic research, visit https://www.nih.gov/news-events/basic-research-digital-media-kit.

NINDSis the nations leading funder of research on the brain and nervous system.The mission of NINDS is to seek fundamental knowledge about the brain and nervous system and to use that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIHTurning Discovery Into Health

Shukla, A.K. et al., Common features of aging fail to occur in Drosophila raised without a bacterial microbiome, iScience, June 24, 2021, DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102703

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Study suggests scientists may need to rethink which genes control aging - National Institutes of Health