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July 8 Vardavar water festival, Yerevan facing Water Shortage.

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Vardavar water festival

YEREVAN — Armenia’s water provider has pledged to restore full supply in the nation’s capital, where residents have complained about water shortages amid a record heat wave that has hit the entire Caucasus region.

Veolia Djur, the Armenian unit of France-based Veolia, on July 6 said it would have water services restored by July 7 — which coincidentally is the eve of Vardavar, a religious festival in Armenia during which people traditionally pour water on each other in the streets.

The company, which provides maintenance of water and sewage services nationwide, reported major breakdowns in the system that forced it to disconnect entire Yerevan neighborhoods from the water supply for several hours.

The difficulties came as temperatures in Yerevan and the rest of Armenia in recent days hovered around 40 degrees Celsius, adding to residents’ discomfort.

The heat wave is shattering temperature records and causing power outages in the other Caucasus nations of Azerbaijan and Georgia and in Iran. Temperatures reached 53 degrees in Iran.

Gor Grigorian, operations director at Veolia Djur, said the water supply to the whole of Yerevan will be restored by July 7.

“Sometimes breakdowns require much time to repair. In this incidence, it coincided with hot weather, a breakdown of pumps, and a breakdown of the water main,” said Grigorian.

The French company in 2016 won a 15-year contract worth about 800 million euros to provide all drinking and wastewater services in Armenia.

Before winning the nationwide contract, the company provided similar services to Yerevan for more than 10 years, employing some 1,200 people in the capital.

71 schools lack water supply in Armenia, opposition MP says

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Yelk opposition faction MP Mane Tandilyan voiced her concerns over the current and ever-growing problems faced by Armenia at today’s special sitting of the National Assembly, which is set to vote on Serzh Sargsyan’s candidacy for prime minister.

The MP noted that the citizens that left Armenia are trying to find a job abroad, while the majority of migrants are from the country’s regions, adding the border villages are mainly populated by pensioners.

MP Tandilyan stressed many people lack access to healthcare in the country due to the high costs of medical services. She also added that Armenia is lagging behind its EAEU partners in the Doing Business rankings.

The opposition MP also raised the issue of pensions, adding they failed to increase despite the expectations.

“In parallel to the poverty threshold of AMD 42,000, the pension is three times lower, standing at AMD 16,000. We have ensured a really ‘dignified life’ for pensioners living with AMD 500 on a daily basis,” she stressed.

Mane Tandilyan also added some 71 schools across Armenia lack water supply, 141 schools have no sewers, while 292 schools have no telephone connection.

Mosul: ISIS Daesh cut off water to thousands of civilians

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Iraqis gather to receive water in the Zuhur neighborhood of Mosul, on December 8, 2016 during an ongoing operation against Takfiri Daesh terrorists. (Photo by AFP)

Daesh terrorists have cut off water supply to dozens of liberated areas in Mosul to keep civilians under control as the Iraqi army and allied fighters renew their push to expel the extremists out of their last urban stronghold.

Nineveh provincial council member Hossam al-Abbar told Arabic-language al-Sumaria television network on Monday that Daesh terrorists have cut water to 30 neighborhoods in the eastern flank of the city, located some 400 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad.

Abbar added that only 10 liberated districts have access to potable water intermittently.

He further noted that water stations in al-Ghabat neighborhood, which nurture western Mosul, are still under Daesh control, and that the terror group has turned off the pumps which send water toward liberated neighborhoods in the city.

The official said Daesh has ordered its members to target areas retaken from them with mortar shells and artillery rounds.

Abbar also urged the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works plus Ministry of Finance to allocate a certain budget as well as tankers to supply drinking water to Mosul neighborhoods.

Zuhair Hazem al-Jabouri, an official with Mosul’s energy and water department, said last month that “Daesh is depriving people of drinking water in eastern Mosul. They want to force people to retreat with them in order to use them as human shields.”

Iraq kills top Baghdadi aide 

Amid army advances in and around Mosul, a high-ranking aide to Daesh ringleader Ibrahim al-Samarrai aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a precision airstrike carried out by the Iraqi Air Force in the central part of the city.

A Nineveh provincial source, requesting anonymity, said the senior Daesh figure, identified by the nom de guerre Abu Loei, was killed along with four other terrorists during an airstrike against al-Islah al-Zeraei neighborhood. Abu Loei was reportedly the director of Daesh security affairs.

An unnamed security source also said federal police forces are closing in on Mosul University’s building, noting that the site is considered as one of the main positions of Daesh in the eastern side of the city.

Iraqi army soldiers, supported by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization Units — commonly known in Arabic as Hashd al-Sha’abi — and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, launched a joint operation on October 17 to retake Mosul from Daesh terrorists.

A total of 137,880 people, or 22,980 families, have been displaced from Mosul and neighboring areas since the start of the operations, according to figures released by the International Organization for Migration.

Battle for Aleppo: Turkey’s-Backed Rebels Shut Off Water for 1.5 Million Syrian Civilians

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AFP Photo

AFP Photo

The so-called “moderate” rebels turned off the water to 1.5 million civilians living in West Aleppo in retaliation for a Syrian Army airstrike on East Aleppo that allegedly left 250,000 residents without water setting the stage for an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.

The city of Aleppo is “dying” according to United Nations officials after a fierce wave of bombing last night by the Syrian Army in an attempt to break the stalemate in what once was the economic capital of the country but is now left to rubble after years of combat between the Assad government and rebels.

Last night’s airstrikes according to early reporting by the United Nations left 115 dead as hostilities have intensified following the collapse of the ceasefire earlier this week resulting in large part from a US-led coalition airstrike on a Syrian Army base in Deir Ez-Zor that left 62 dead and hundreds injured “paving the way” for a major offensive by Daesh (ISIS) terrorists and over 300 ceasefire violations by the rebels.

The rebels signaled in the day before the ceasefire that they would not comply with the agreement brokered by the United States and Russia with the second largest rebel group Ahrar al-Sham even saying that it was “impossible” for the group to breakaway from al-Nusra Front terrorists (formerly Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate prior to a rebranding effort) because the two groups had become too entangled fighting under the common banner of the Army of Conquest.

With hopes for peace on hold Syrian airstrikes have escalated which the rebels claim undermined attempts to repair a water pump supplying rebel-held districts in East Aleppo with water allegedly blocking the flow of the vital resource to some 250,000 residents. In an act of reprisal, the rebels switched off the Suleiman al-Halabi pumping station that provides water to 1.5 million Syrian civilians in government controlled West Aleppo raising the possibility of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in what has already turned into the largest displacement of civilians in human history. Kieran Dwyer, spokesman for the UN Children’s Rights & Emergency Relief Organization (UNICEF) explained that the Bab al-Nairab pumping station supplying rebel-held parts of Aleppo was allegedly damaged on Thursday and subsequent strikes rendered repairs impossible. “Then in retaliation for that attack a nearby pumping station that pumps water to the entire western part of the city – upwards to 1.5 million people – was deliberately switched off,” said Dwyer.

UNICEF fears that families in West Aleppo will be forced to use contaminated liquid carrying waterborne diseases to which children are particularly vulnerable as a result of the intentional act of terroristic sabotage by the rebels in contravention of international humanitarian standards.

“Aleppo is slowly dying, and the world is watching, and the water is being cut off and bombed – it’s just the latest act of inhumanity,” said UNICEF Deputy Director Justin Forsyth.

Turkey Shuts Off Water Supply to Syria

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BY DANIEL PIPES
From National Review Online

euphrates-river-valley_turkey_syria_iraq1Two reports from Beirut’s Al-Akhbar point to potentially catastrophic water problems about to affect Syria.

The lesser concerns Aleppo, where mortar shells and barrel bombs have slackened off but Islamist rebels have shut down the city’s potable water supply, forcing Aleppan residents in government-controlled areas to depend on wells and trucks for limited, contaminated, and expensive water. Lines of women and children “have become ubiquitous in front of mosque fountains and government wells in order to fill small containers such as cooking pots, teapots and plastic bottles as well as small barrels,” the paper reports. According to an official at the Syrian Red Crescent, “The situation signals a humanitarian and health disaster.”

The greater problem concerns the Euphrates River, the second longest waterway of the Middle East. Nearly all its volume originates in the Republic of Turkey, from which it flows into Syria and Iraq, ending in the Persian Gulf. It provides about one-third of Syria’s water supply. In the last few weeks, according to Al-Akhbar, the Turkish government completely stopped Euphrates waters from leaving Turkey and flowing into Syria, something made possible by the enormous reservoir behind its Atatürk Dam.

This action threatens water crises in Syria and Iraq . As one indication, the water level in Lake Assad, Syria’s largest body of water, has gone down by about 20 feet, according to the paper. Within days, some 7 million Syrians could be left without water as well as electricity. Al-Akhbar says that “a halt to the water supply is now inevitable and can’t be resolved unless the Turkish government takes the decision to resume pumping Euphrates water.” To make matters yet more worrisome, the fanatic Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group controls the Tishrin Dam, one of Syria’s three dams on the Euphrates.

The Syrian civil war keeps getting more ferocious, vicious, and barbaric — not a surprise given that Islamists, both domestic and foreign, dominate the fighting on both sides.

Meanwhile, the Euphrates River contains some of the world’s most volatile and fearsome waterworks; the Mosul Dam in Iraq, for example, could collapse, killing millions. Again, given the three states involved (Turkey, Syria, and Iraq), this also ranks as less than a surprise.

Should terminal dehydration kill massive numbers of Syrians, this will likely prompt Western opinion to call for intervention.

Turkey’s AKP government has already shown itself callous about loss of life (recall the Soma coal-mine disaster). But is Prime Minister Erdogan really about to commit what appears to be genocide?

Flush with coke: UK so high on cocaine that users have ‘contaminated tap water’

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The Sunday Times reports

Experts from the drinking water inspectorate found that cocaine use in Britain is now so high it has contaminated the drinking water supply, even after it has gone through 000_par7805003.siintensive purification treatments, UK media reports.

Scientists found supplies of drinking water contained traces of benzoylecgonine, the metabolized form of the drug after it has been processed by the human body. Benzoylecgonine is the same compound used for urine-based tests for cocaine, the Sunday Times reports.

The findings are an eye-opening indication of how widely the drug is used in Britain.

“We have near the highest level of cocaine use in western Europe. It has also been getting cheaper and cheaper at the same time as its use has been going up,” Steve Rolles, from the drug policy think-tank Transform, told the Sunday Times.

Nearly 700,000 people aged 16-59 are estimated to take cocaine every year in Britain, and there are around 180,000 addicted users of crack cocaine, according to the charity DrugScope.

Health officials stressed that the amounts found in drinking water were very low and unlikely to represent a danger to the public, however.

A recent report from Public Health England found that quantitiess of cocaine at 4 nanograms per liter, around one-quarter of what was found before the water was treated.

“Estimated exposures for most of the detected compounds are at least thousands of times below doses seen to produce adverse effects in animals and hundreds of thousands below human therapeutic doses,” the report states.

Although cocaine use in Britain is among the highest in Europe, its use has actually decreased since the 2008 financial crisis and has been steadily falling among 16-24 year olds, who no longer see it as glamorous – largely because its widespread availability has reduced its subversive appeal.

But among older generations, it still retains its whiff of subversive decadence and glamour.

“It’s ridiculous, I’ve been at parties when there have been more people in the bathroom than outside it, yet this strange etiquette is still upheld. I think it’s partly about exclusion and inclusion – who’s in, who’s out, who’s cool and who’s not. It’s remarkably childish, but if you’re a middle-aged professional who doesn’t get out much, then that bathroom can seem like the hottest ticket in town,” Matthew, a 49-year-old corporate lawyer, told The Guardian.