'We're trapped!': California's wildfires double in size with tens of thousands forced to flee and many more stuck inside as satellite images show smoke blanketing the state that now has the worst air quality in the world

There are now 26 major wildfire incidents raging across California.

At least five people have died and two are missing after dozens of lightning-sparked California wildfires spread rapidly on Thursday, doubling in size in the state's wine country alone while expanding by nearly a third near Palo Alto. There are now 26 major fire incidents in the state, the largest raging to the north and south of the San Francisco Bay Area and affecting more than 350,000 acres in total. Up to 62,000 people have now been forced to flee as shocking satellite images show how smoke from the massive blaze has drifted 600 miles into the Pacific Ocean.

Five fatalities were reported as of Thursday night as Governor Gavin Newsom asked for help from other states in fighting the flames back. At least two people were missing and 33 civilians and firefighters have been injured. Ten of thousands evacuating to safety are trying to do so as the coronavirus pandemic still rages through the state and thick smoke creates dangerous breathing conditions. Locals have described being 'trapped' between the pandemic and the flames heading toward them. Up to 100,000 more people may be forced to leave their homes if the fires can not be pushed back soon. California's air quality has become the worst in the world, according to CNN, having plummeted to 'very unhealthy' and 'hazardous' levels. 'We’re in a pandemic and a heat wave, and we don’t have air conditioning,' Kena Hudson, whose young son has asthma, told CNBC. 'We can’t open up the window, we’re trapped, we’re hot and no one can come over to play'.

California has been hit by its worst lightning storms in nearly two decades. Around 11,000 strikes ignited over 370 fires this week, fouling air quality for hundreds of miles and stretching firefighting resources to the limit, authorities said. Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California's oldest state park with redwood trees up to 2,000 years old, suffered extensive damage to historic buildings, the state parks department said. South of San Francisco, a cluster of lightning-strike fires doubled in size to 40,000 acres in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, injuring three first responders, forcing 22,000 to evacuate and destroying 20 structures, wildfire authority CalFire reported. As the fire moved south, the University of California Santa Cruz called for voluntary evacuations from its campus on the northern flank of the coastal city. On Thursday evening, evacuation orders were expanded throughout Santa Cruz County which lies within the zone known as the CZU lightening complex. There was zero percent containment on the fires in this zone as evacuations reached 50,000 people, 48,000 acres were confirmed burned, and 20,952 structures were threatened maid reports from officials that up to 200 have been destroyed.

To the north, at least nine fires raced through hills in California's wine country about 35 miles southwest of Sacramento, destroying over 105 homes and other structures. Collectively known as the LNU Complex Fire, they have doubled in size to 131,000 acres since Wednesday, forming a 'megafire' 10 times larger than New York's Manhattan island. 'It sucks, everything is gone,' Nick Pike told CapRadio in Sacramento after he and three neighbors lost their homes near Vacaville. A PG&E utility worker died on Wednesday helping first responders, the second fatality from fires after the death of a firefighting helicopter pilot in a crash. On the Thursday afternoon, a third death, of a resident in Solano County, was reported by Sheriff Thomas A. Ferrara, although he didn't have any additional details. Two more deaths were reported late Thursday night but details were not immediately available. At least four civilians were injured in the LNU fire, according to Cal Fire.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8649391/California-wildfires-double-size-tens-thousands-fleeing-safety.html

Thinking this feels like recycled news..

Erdogan Unveils Biggest Ever Black Sea Natural Gas Discovery

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey has found 320 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the biggest ever discovery in the Black Sea, and hopes to begin production by 2023. The lira and benchmark share index both gave up gains, though, possibly reflecting disappointment among investors over the size of the deposit. ”We have conducted this operation completely through national means,” Erdogan said Friday in a much-trailed press conference at his office in Istanbul. “We didn’t even rely one bit on foreign sources in drilling operations.” The Fatih drill ship located the gas in the so-called Tuna-1 field, he said, and exploration is continuing in other fields. “The question now is how much of this gas is recoverable,” said Jonathan Lamb, oil and gas senior analyst at Wood & Company, a Czech investment bank. “This is not clear yet. What the market really wants to know also is how much they can produce per year, but I don’t think they are in the position to say that yet.” The Borsa Istanbul 100 index fell as much as 1.8%, while shares in energy companies including refiner Tupras, Aksa Enerji and Aygaz dropped sharply after the news.

Turkey Finds Energy in Black Sea as Erdogan Vows a New Era Turkey bought three drilling ships in recent years as it dramatically expanded energy exploration in the Black Sea and contested waters of the eastern Mediterranean. It’s keen to find sizable energy reserves to ease its heavy reliance on imports from Iran, Iraq and Russia, and support one of the biggest economies in the Middle East. The Fatih has been drilling to a depth of 3,500 to 4,000 meters (11,500 to 13,000 feet), Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said last month. Turkey’s state-run oil company TPAO, however, has no experience in deep-sea gas production and would likely need to enlist a major firm to exploit a field. With oil and gas prices having slumped, the economics of developing such a find may be less attractive than in the past. “Turkey is a premium gas market, which has never been significant on a global scale,” said Ashley Sherman, principal analyst on Caspian and Europe upstream at Wood Mackenzie. “The discovery really reinforces the country’s potential role as an energy producer in the region.”

Tuna-1, some 150 kilometers (93.2 miles) from Turkey’s coast, is close to an area where maritime borders of Bulgaria and Romania converge. It’s not far from Romania’s Neptun block, the largest gas find in the Black Sea in decades discovered eight years ago by Petrom and Exxon. Romania has shallow-water gas projects, but a major deep-water find eight years ago has still to be exploited. A company backed by The Carlyle Group Inc. is also exploring off Romania, aiming to get gas in 2021. Rosneft PJSC has explored in the Russian part of the Black Sea but without concrete results. Turkey is mired in territorial disputes with Greece and Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean as it searches for oil and gas in contested waters. France has temporarily increased its military presence to ward off Turkish steps, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday said the European Union was concerned over the increased tensions. Erdogan said he also expects “good news” from exploration activities in the eastern Mediterranean.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/erdogan-unveils-turkey-biggest-ever-130015711.html

Survey of India’s 9th-largest city finds COVID antibodies in 52% of the population

More than half the residents in one of India's largest cities may have developed antibodies for the coronavirus, according to the results of a serological survey released this week. The survey was carried out in Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra with a population of 4 million. Researchers tested 1,664 participants' blood samples for the presence of coronavirus antibodies, the proteins that the body produces in response to a coronavirus infection. They detected antibodies in 51.5% of the blood samples. The participants hailed from five areas of Pune; in one of the areas, 65% of participants had coronavirus antibodies. The results indicate that a much higher proportion of people in Pune may have been infected with coronavirus, and recovered from the disease it causes, COVID-19, than official numbers show. India's coronavirus tally as of Friday was nearly 3 million confirmed cases and almost 55,000 deaths, putting it behind U.S. and Brazil as the third-hardest hit nation in absolute numbers. If the serological survey's indications are accurate, the actual number of cases in Pune would be 20 times higher than the official number.

Previous serological studies in other parts of India found comparably high antibody levels among the surveyed population, suggesting that India's official case number is much lower than the actual number of people infected. A serological survey conducted in Delhi in the first week of August found that 29.1% of Delhi's population had coronavirus antibodies—an increase of more than six percentage points since the last serological survey of the city in early July. The earlier survey indicated that Delhi's case count was 40 times higher than its confirmed case number. One July survey of people across Mumbai, including residents of the city's densely-packed slums, found that 57% had coronavirus antibodies, prompting one scientist to say that those areas "may have reached herd immunity."

Reaching herd immunity means enough people in a given area have contracted a disease, recovered from it, and developed immunity to it that the disease stops spreading. It is a controversial approach to the coronavirus pandemic because, in allowing the disease to spread unchecked, it puts more vulnerable groups, like the elderly and immunocompromised, at greater risk of death. It's also not yet known exactly how long immunity to the coronavirus lasts. One of the research groups involved in the Pune serological study cautioned that the survey results didn't account for potential re-infection. "[The] study does not provide information on immunity from subsequent infection," the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, one of the groups involved in the research, wrote on Twitter.

https://fortune.com/2020/08/21/covid-antibodies-india-pune-survey-herd-immunity/

>>10371699

>>10371721

Disputed waters..which countries will take up the fight against Turkey..Thinking Russia..via Crimea?