Disaster

A plane carrying 81 people, including top Brazilian football team Chapecoense, heading for the biggest game in its history, crashed on its approach to the city of Medellin in Colombia. 76 of those on board have perished.

The charter flight was carrying 72 passengers and nine crew, when it crashed around 10:15 p.m. on Monday. Heavy rain first hampered and then halted rescue operations. Officials told local media that bodies would be removed at first light. Brazilian news organizations reported 21 journalists had been on board to cover the match.

6 people are dead and almost 9,000 hospitalized in Australia after a ‘bio warfare’ thunderstorm left emergency services stretched beyond capacity.  The bizarre storm, known as “thunderstorm asthma,” gave some people heart attacks and others struggling to breathe, as ambulances were reportedly called for on average every 4 seconds. Thedailysheeple.com reports: Right now if you search for this story on Google News Australia, there isn’t a peep about it in the top news. You have to type in the word “asthma”. Then it’s like a horror show.

Scientists have warned that the Arctic is undergoing unusually rapid changes at the moment that will result in worldwide flooding as a result of global warming. According to an Arctic Council report, unless the world stops burning fossil fuels, the turbulent changing occuring in the Arctic could result in catastrophic effects for the wildlife that live there and the rest of humanity on the planet. Rising sea levels are already eroding away at America’s coastlines, and threaten to cause entire islands to sink underwater.

Israeli settlers have been forced to flee as wildfires have started to spread through areas near to settlements in the occupied West Bank. According to a police spokeswoman on Saturday nearly 1,000 settlers were forced to leave the Halamish settlement near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah as 45 settler units were either damaged or destroyed by the fires. The blazes, fueled by drought and high winds, were raging in many locations throughout the Israeli-occupied territories on Friday . The fire in Israels third largest city Haifa has forced some 80,000 people to flee.

The first U.S. combat death in Syria occurred Thursday when a Special Forces member died from wounds sustained by an ISIS improvised explosive device, says CNN, citing the Pentagon. U.S. forces suffer their first casualty in northern Syria on Thursday while engaged in an offensive against ISIS. CNN Politics reports: This marks the first time a US service member has been killed inside Syria since a small number of US Special Forces were sent there last year to advise and assist Syrian forces battling ISIS, also known as ISIL.