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Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at midday, hurricane on the way? The remnants of Hurricane Ophelia made landfall in Ireland on Monday, but the storm’s winds have created an eerie effect throughout England. Keele University posted a tweet showing a reddish sun over the school’s observatory, located about 40 miles south of Manchester, England. Several others have posted similar observations as well. "Visibility did not drop to dangerous levels for traffic to be at risk, because much of the cloud was above our heads, but some fog did lie low and it looked like we were immersed in a "pumpkin-like soup," Jacco van Loon, the observatory director, told Newsweek. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now The national forecaster service in the U.K., the Met Office, confirmed that a combination of Saharan dust and particles from fires that continue to burn in Portugal are causing the effect. “What’s actually happened is that ex-Hurricane Ophelia, as it’s gone up the west coast of Ireland, it’s been pulling in air from further south in Europe and indeed from North Africa. That has brought unseasonably warm temperatures to the UK,” said Met Office spokesman Grahame Madge. “The particles high up in the atmosphere have scattered some of the wavelengths of sunlight,” he explained. The proportion of the wavelengths getting through the atmosphere has changed, creating the effect. “We do get Saharan dust traveling to the U.K. We get it reasonably regularly," he said—maybe once a year in most places. "Normally the evidence is you get sand deposits left on cars overnight." The sun over Keele University's observatory south of Manchester, England, bathed the region in a weird reddish glow due to particulates carried on the winds of ex-Hurricane Ophelia. Courtesy of Keele University The fires in Portugal have killed at least 30 people, The New York Times reported. Ophelia has killed one person, according to the BBC. This kind of effect has been seen in the U.S. after fires, too. Wildfires on the West Coast in 2015 were also associated with redder-than-usual sunsets, according to USA Today. Other kinds of storms can change the colors of the sun and sky. Though many claim that a greenish sky means a tornado is coming, scientists aren't so sure that's true. Given the right conditions, the sky could go green for any old storm. Regardless of the color of the sky, weather officials in Ireland are warning people to stay inside and avoid unnecessary travel as the storm passes through. Met Éireann, the Irish national weather service, noted that people should continue to check on the weather throughout the day. They also declared that Monday should be a "no bike day." "Take extreme care," the service tweeted. |
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This article appeared on the Wilson Center site. Most Russians live in an information universe that is utterly peculiar and starkly different from most others. Russia’s state-run television commands immense power over Russian minds and most Russians apparently like it. Television would not be that important if people didn’t want it. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now Many years have passed since we only had three or four channels on our menus. We now have hundreds if not thousands of options, but still opt for a time-honored way of learning about the world. This is an inevitable conclusion when looking at polling figures: 72 percent of those recently polled by the independent pollster Levada say Channel One, the successor to Soviet Central Television, is their main source of news. This is true even for younger Russians: 54 percent of those aged between 18 and 24 choose Channel One as their main news source. Television is trusted less and less as the years pass, yet it still remains the number one way of getting information in Russia. Globally, the trend is for younger people (and everyone else) to turn to social media for their news. According to a study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, in 2017 social media overtook television as young people’s main source of news. Of the 18–24-year-olds surveyed, 28 percent cited social media as their main news source, compared with 24 percent who cited TV. Does this mean that Russia is somehow immune to global processes? Or that Russian TV channels and their Kremlin curators are good at making people watch them? The answer to the first question is no. Russia is not immune to anything, it is just slow. The tendency exists in Russia too: according to VTSIOM, Russia’s state-run pollster, 65 percent of people aged between 18 and 24 say that they search for news online, but that the internet is not their exclusive source. Yes, television is the main source of news; however, its popularity is decreasing, while the internet is becoming increasingly popular. The answer to the second question is yes. Russia’s state-run television is remarkably good at attracting an audience. More than that, it is good at creating and maintaining certain basic viewpoints. TV sets broadcasting a press conference by Vladimir Putin in an electronics store in Moscow 31 January 2006. DENIS SINYAKOV/AFP/Getty One can switch channels as much as one pleases, one can turn to other sources of information, but for most Russians the likelihood of being able or willing to break free from the “information dome” that envelopes them is small. An information bubble has been forming in Russia since the early 2000s, when the Kremlin moved aggressively into television and ended up owning or controlling most of it. Many people choose to cling to a dominant opinion not for lack of alternatives. Being better informed does not mean being more critical. While only 66 percent of those who use no independent sources approve of the performance of Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, 80 percent of those who use three or more independent sources of information approve of him, according to Levada sociologists Denis Volkov and Stepan Goncharov. The Kremlin’s policies toward Ukraine are as popular in well informed Moscow as they are in the poorly informed regions. In other words, a very large proportion of those who express an interest in learning more about the country’s politics and economy still conform to a majority opinion. Only those who use at least three or more independent channels of information demonstrate considerable differences with conformist views. About 10 percent of the Russian population use three or more sources of news, and about 30 percent in Moscow. These are Russia’s best-informed citizens, and are the only ones to support views that deviate from those held by the majority. Every country lives in a bubble. Countries differ perhaps only in the strength of the pull of their respective domestic universes. In Russia, it requires considerable effort to tear oneself away from the majority view. The domestic information bubble is powerful not because the Kremlin’s message is particularly strong but because all other messages are relatively weak. “By discrediting Western politics, undermining democratic procedures, and attacking independent media, the Russian authorities have fueled the kind of general cynicism that says: everybody is corrupt, all media lie,” according to Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada Center, speaking to Vedomosti. This is why alternative sources of news do not enjoy much credibility with large swaths of the Russian population. People are attracted not to facts but to the kind of emotional overload Russian television channels deliver on a daily basis. They divide the world into warring factions and play to people’s nationalist feelings; they uncover fascism in Ukraine and gruesome crime everywhere; they scare their audiences with sinister mysticism and soothe with weird esoterica. Yes, Russian TV channels package the world for the lowest common denominator, but they also know how to make it addictive. That said, not everybody watches television and not everybody is affected by the overall cynicism that permeates Russian society. A growing independent segment of the Russian media sphere is video blogging. Its audience is exactly the age group mentioned at the start: 18–24-year-olds. They have their heroes and celebrities who are completely unknown to the rest of the population. There are bloggers commanding millions of subscribers, most of whom express nonconformist views. The phenomenon is not universal, but it is robust and growing. “While we can only talk about a Russia of the future with a dreamy smile, the television of the future already exists,” wrote the sociologist Stepan Goncharov recently. Maxim Trudolyubov is Senior Fellow with the Kennan Institute and editor-at-large with Vedomosti. This article was riginally published in a slightly different form in IWMpost, a publication of the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. Tags: low-cost M2M router, compact industrial router, low-cost cellular router , cellular router, low-cost 4g router |