Stories below the fold

A pipe explodes in China, bringing attention to that country's quality control issues. From AlJ:

An explosion at a power plant in China has killed at least 21 people and injured five, according to state media, the latest deadly industrial accident in a country that struggles with poor safety standards. Thursday’s blast took place a day before the first anniversary of massive explosions in a hazardous-material warehouse in the northeastern city of Tianjin that killed nearly 200 people, one of China’s worst industrial accidents in recent years.

BBC report remembers the explosion last year,  and notes that most of the 173 people killed were firefighters.

There is a lot of news stories about Chinese business success, but one problem is their shoddy workmanship.
-------------------

A school or illegal immigrants.... in Iran. Again from AlJ...

The government says there are believed to be 500,000 Afghan children in Iran who are not officially attending school, while rights groups have estimated that there are around two million undocumented Afghans in total in Iran. Khamenei has said that all children in Iran should be able to attend school, regardless of their residency status.

there were huge numbers who left when the Russians invaded, and more when the Taliban took over. After the US ousted the Taliban and the country stablized many returned, but now are fleeing again.

---------------------

Mom Jones reports that it's hard to find coffee in the Olympic village because Coca Cola runs the concession.

------------------------
 PhysOrg:
Huge fires in the western USA are not new: insects or disease or fire are nature's way to thin the forest.

Contrary to popular accounts, wildfire acres in recent years are not at all unprecedented in ancient or modern history. Studies of charcoal in sediments dating back 8,000 years show vast areas burned in hot fires during droughts, just like today. According to the National Interagency Coordination Center, a total of less than 10 million acres burned in U.S. wildfires in 2015. Yet during the 10-year hot and dry period from the late 1920's to the late 1930's an average of 30 million acres burned every year.

-a lot of this is a discussion about logging, which should not destroy the forest if done right.

---------------------

LATimes article discussing if the AmerIndians arrived via land or hopped down the coast.

the corrider opened 12000 years ago and closed up 10 thousand years ago, which was consistent with the Clovis theory, but recent pre Clovis findings are causing a rewrite of the theory.

or maybe there were several migrations as this NYTimes article discusses...
from a Navajo website:

rchaeologists believe the indigenous peoples that eventually populated the Americas occurred in three separate migrations.The largest of these groups is referred to as the Amerind (Paleo-Indians). The Amerind, which includes most Native Americans south of the Canadian border, commenced around 11,500 B.C..

A second migration called the Na-Dene occurred between 10,000 B.C. and 8, 000 B.C.. Even though at this point the Bering Sea separated Siberia and Alaska, it was only three miles wide in some places. The Athapascan speaking populations of Canada and the United States belong to this group of migrants. The Apache and Navajo in the southwestern United States are from the Athapascan migrants.

The third migration around 3,000 B.C. included the Aleuts and Eskimos of Alaska, Canada, and the Aleutian Islands (Taylor).

they are hoping DNA will eventually solve this question.

-------------------

StrategyPage discusses Duterte.

an outsider who is similar to Rudy Guilliani on steroids.
Thus from July 1st (when Duterte took office) through August 9th police conducted 4,715 raids (or simply efforts to bring in suspects for questioning). Police also visited over 260,000 known drug locations and sought information. Early on the drug gangs and their corrupt political and police protectors realized that these Duterte tactics were different. Since July 1st 513 drug suspects who refused to cooperate (often by using force) have been killed. But over half a million suspects (mostly users and low level pushers) cooperated and that led to the arrest of dozens of senior people (drug gang leaders, corrupt politicians and police commanders) who provided specifics about widespread corruption. Now that is being followed up.

And remember, when you read critical things in the paper about him, that the elites that run the country are running scared and getting their friends in the media to emphasize what he does "wrong".

Sort of like how CNN is treating Trump.