Daily Archives: May 27, 2022

Unless you live near a port, you probably dont think much about the tens of thousands of container ships tearing through the seas, hauling some 1.8 billion metric tons of stuff each year. Yet these vessels run on some of the dirtiest fuel there is, spewing more greenhouse gases than airplanes do in the process. The industry is exploring alternative fuels and electrification to solve the problem for next-generation ships, but in the meantime a Y Combinator-backed startup is gearing up to (hopefully) help decarbonize the big boats thatre already in the water.

London-based Seabound is currently prototyping carbon capture equipment that connects to ships smokestacks, using a lime-based approach to cut carbon emissions by as much as 95%, co-founder and CEO Alisha Fredriksson said in a call with TechCrunch. The startups tech works by routing the exhaust into a container thats filled with porous, calcium oxide pebbles, which in turn bind to carbon dioxide to form calcium carbonate, essentially limestone, per Fredriksson.

Though carbon capture has yet to really catch on for ships, Seabound is just one of the companies out to prove the tech can eventually scale. Others, including Japanese shipping firm K Line and Netherlands-based Value Maritime, are developing their own carbon-capture tech for ships, typically utilizing the better-established, solvent-based approach (which is increasingly used in factories). Yet this comparably tried-and-true method demands more space and energy aboard ships, because the process of isolating the CO2 happens on the vessel, according to Fredriksson.

In contrast, Seabound intends to process the CO2 on land, if at all. When the ships return from their journey, the limestone can be sold as is or separated via heat. In the latter case, the calcium oxide would be reused and the carbon sold for use or sequestration, per Fredriksson, who previously helped build maritime fuel startup Liquid Wind. Her co-founder, CTO Roujia Wen, previously worked on AI products at Amazon.

Seabound says it has signed six letters of intent with major shipowners, and it aims to trial the tech aboard ships beginning next year. To get there, the company has secured $4.4 million in a seed round led by Chris Saccas Lowercarbon Capital. Several other firms also chipped in on the deal, including Eastern Pacific Shipping, Emles Venture Partners, Hawktail, Rebel Fund and Soma Capital.

Beyond carbon capture, another Y Combinator-backed startup is setting out to decarbonize existing ships via a novel battery-swapping scheme. New Orleans-based Fleetzero aims to power electrified ships using shipping container-sized battery packs, which could be recharged through a network of charging stations at small ports.

Continued here:

Carbon capture is headed for the high seas - TechCrunch

ByIrina Anghel and Eamon Akil Farhat

May 21, 2022,(Bloomberg) Theres never been a more dreamy way to have your coffee delivered than a sailboat across the Atlantic.

A small number of specialty roasters in Europe are now offering beans that have been sailed rather thanshipped via fossil-fuel burning vessels from South America. While theyre a rare luxury compared with standard bags of supermarket coffee, these wind-blown beans may inspire some imaginative ideas for finding and stamping out carbon emissions fromyour everyday life.

Heres a glimpse of the journey: Roasters buy the beans directly from growers in countries like Colombia before theyre stored in a warehouse and loaded onto a sailboat destined for ports like Le Havre, France or Penzance, England. The crossing typically takessix weeks. The beans are then couriered to specialty roasters before ending up in espressos served in coffee shops or at home.

Youre one step away from the coffee being grown, almost, said Richard Blake, founder of Yallah Coffee, a Cornwall-based roaster who sells beans sailed from Colombia. A 1-kilogram bag of Yallah Coffees Las Brisas beans costs 50 ($62) but boasts a carbon footprint close to zero. As a price comparison, the most expensive coffee beans UK supermarket Tesco Plcsells onlineis a 1-kilogram bag for 13.75 ($17).

Blake said people are happy to pay for a premium product if they feel like there is value in all the steps.

That can be lost with the homogenized mix of beans on a supermarket shelf, he said, whereas if its single origin, and if its on a ship, theres less people in the chain, and that creates more value.

A few years ago, a small group ofenvironmentally focused entrepreneurs, such as Shipped by Sail in the UK, started using pirate-like schooners to prove that goods like coffee could be transported with near-zero emissions even if it took more money and all the risks linked with crossing the Atlantic on hundred-year-old wooden boats for a couple dozen bags of high-end beans.

What started as bravado is now making a bit more business sense. Consumers have become more willing to pay extra for the greener coffeeand roasters are rising to the challenge to provide it to them.

TakeBelco, a sustainable coffee importer based in France serving around 1,000 specialty roasters all over Europe. The company bought 22 tons of Colombian coffee delivered by a schooner earlier this year. Its had such positive feedback from customers that theyrenow planning to import at least halfof their total coffee beans about 4,000 tons by sailboat by 2025. In order to do this, though, theyre going to need a bigger boat.

Belco is relying on shipments from Frances TransOceanic Wind Transport, a sailing freight transport company. To meet growing demands of customers like Belco, TOWT is building a sailing vessel capable of holding 1,100 tons of goods. The first ship is due in June next year and three more should follow by 2026.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Costa Ricas SailCargo Inc. is preparing to sail South American beans north to customers like Serge Picard, the owner of CafWilliam Spartivento, the biggest Canadian-owned roaster for Fair Trade Organic coffee. Caf Williams said it has invested in a new SailCargo veseel that will carry 250 tons of goods when its expected to launch next year.

Years of innovation have given the coffee industry plenty of ways to reduce its carbon footprint on the farm level, from replacing chmical fertilizers with organic wasteto using renewable energy to power equipment. Shipping has remained a weak spot. It might be more efficient to transport coffee beans by sea than air, but todays cargo ship engines are driven by bunker fuel the dregs of th oil refining process. Large sailboats have motors for when theyre needed, but their main source of power is emissions-free wind, which gives them the added benefit of being mostly immune tovolatile oilprices.

To be sure, conventional freighters which hold thousands of tons of goods are much more economic than a ye olde pirate ship, or even a 1,000-ton sailing vessel, for transporting lots of different cargo like coffee. But that isnt stopping some coffee importers and sailboat manufacturers from trying to overthrow the heavy ships command of the high seas.

Maxence Lacroix, co-founder of Belgian specialty roasteryJavry, which acquired its first order of coffee beans via sailboat earlier this year, is keen to see disruption in the shipping industry.

We need to be lots of small actors to be able to change things, because the bigger actors are definitely not going to do it, he said. The change must come from the bottom.

2022Bloomberg L.P.

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Coffee Shipped by Sailboats In Efforts To Disrupt The Heavy Ships' Command Of The High Seas - gCaptain

File photo used for representation only.

Doha: Hot weather conditions during daytime and blowing dust are likely during the weekend as Qatar Meteorology Department (QMD) warns of strong wind and high seas offshore.

Temperatures will also range from 30 degrees Celsius as the lowest and 42 degrees Celsius as the maximum.

The wind will blow at northwesterly direction on Friday at 10-20 KT gusting to 27 KT inshore and will reduce to 5-15 KT at night. Meanwhile, the wind offshore will range from 15-25 KT gusting to 30 KT.

On Saturday, the wind will blow in the same direction at 7-17 KT gusting to 25 KT inshore and 12-22 KT reaching to 28 KT offshore.

QMD also issued a warning regarding high seas as heights will vary from 3-5 ft inshore.

Visibility will mainly range between 4-8 kilometres during the weekend but may vary less than that on Friday.

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QMD warns of strong wind and high sea during the weekend - The Peninsula

Since 2013, the NFLs throwback uniforms have been tainted. A rule that limited teams to a single helmet style hampered some franchises ability to take the field looking like a slice of 1967.

Gone was Pat Patriot and the Broncos full Orange Crush kit. Buccaneer Bruce was kept on the bench instead of sailing the high seas of a Tampa Bay Super Bowl season. The Bills could pay homage to their teams of the 1960s thanks to their white helmet base but couldnt throw it back to the red-helmet days of Marv Levy and four straight AFC championships.

The Packers ugly brown helmets well, OK, that was probably a good idea to scrap those.

Mary Langenfeld-USA TODAY Sports

Fortunately for the world at large, the NFLs throwback uniforms will be restored to their full glory in 2022. The league revised its policy to allow a second helmet to be added to the rotation and paired with any look its team is going for traditional, throwback, or (deep sigh, rubs temples) Color Rush.

We dont officially know which franchises will take advantage of the relaxed helmet rule; teams have until July 31 to file their uniform plan with league headquarters. We do know that list will probably include the New England Patriots thanks to Jalen Mills Instagram:

Several others will join them, because a snappy throwback is social media equivalent of throwing against a prevent defense. Which teams have the most to gain with the cleanest looks? Oh, my friend, I am happy you asked.

Listen, if a digested-food brown helmet is what it takes to bring back the yellow dot ACME Packers uniforms, just get it done.

The path is clear for Dallas to get back to its Thanksgiving throwback tradition. These uniforms are fine.

Philly should have never abandoned the Kelly green.

The Falcons look clean as hell in red. They look clean as hell in black, too, so the throwbacks arent a major improvement and thus rank relatively low on my chart. Say, while youre here, can I interest you in everyones favorite center/uncle Jeff Van Note?

That man played into his 40s and is bleeding from the forehead in roughly half the Getty Image photos where you can see his face. Here he is picketing during the 1987 strike, which took place *after* he retired:

That is a six-time Pro Bowler and not a random trucker bussed in from the nearest Flying J. Get Jeff Van Note to the Hall of Fame immediately.

A truly awful football team (at the time) with a truly awful uniform (at the time). The Bucs creamsicle kits are so tacky they swung back to fashionable.

Tom Brady officially unretired due to his love of the game. Unofficially, he knows that these BRADY 12 jerseys in orange and white are a license to print money.

Seattle has undoubtedly been much better as a franchise since ditching silver as a primary color and reducing the size of its bird of war from enormous to merely prominent. Even so, these are roughly 200 percent better than their day-glo Color Rush catastrophes.

Good god.

Red helmets, white uniforms, blue numbers. Simple and perfect. Call them your Jim Kelly special and sell a million Josh Allen jerseys to Bills Mafia.

Soft blue and orange are peanut butter and chocolate here.Bring back enormous shoulder pads for running backs while were at it.

If you have a powder blue uniform, you should be wearing a powder blue uniform. The Los Angeles Chargers figured this out and were rewarded with Justin Herbert for their faith.

Read more here:

10 best NFL throwback uniforms eligible to return in 2022 - For The Win

WASHINGTON The congregation at the Maritime Day Mass in Washington May 21 prayed for safe harbor in heaven for mariners and other seafarers who died in the last year and for the protection of our brothers and sisters currently plying the waters aboard vessels delivering goods to the world.

Bishop Brendan J. Cahill of Victoria, Texas, the main celebrant and homilist for the Mass, said the church entrusts the care of all seafarers to Mary under one of her earliest titles Star of the Sea.

She provides a light in a storm for all and sets a course through these times to reach our safe haven in heaven a safe harbor home, he said in his homily, urging the faithful to always look to her for guidance and a source of joy.

The Mass was celebrated in the Crypt Church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington in observance of the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Mariners and People of the Sea.

It was sponsored by the Stella Maris National Office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Stella Maris is the Catholic Churchs ministry to seafarers around the world. Its network of chaplains and volunteers offers spiritual care and various services to seafarers, fishers, port personnel and their families.

Bishop Cahill is the episcopal promoter for Stella Maris in the United States.

Concelebrating the Mass was Father Paul Hartmann, USCCB associate general secretary. A Milwaukee archdiocesan priest, he was appointed to the post in February and joined the USCCB staff in mid-May.

Deacon Paul Rosenblum, a regional coordinator for Stella Maris and port chaplain in the Diocese of Charleston, S.C., assisted at the Mass.

In his homily, Bishop Cahill described St. Pauls time at sea and how he depended on seafarers and their hard work as he journeyed to the ends of the earth to proclaim the good news. The apostle also was shipwrecked during a dangerous journey on his way to Rome. He and his companions washed up on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

Paul had received a message from God that although their ship would perish, the group would survive, and just as they found safe harbor, Bishop Cahill said, Jesus Christ takes us to the safe harbor of eternal life. All of us are invited to safe harbor home and we pray for others that they will have safe harbor home with Jesus Christ.

As Mass came to a close, Sister Joanna Okereke, national director of the USCCBs Stella Maris ministry, thanked the congregation for coming to the Maritime Day Mass, which is an annual liturgy but this year was the first in the last couple of years it was celebrated in person due to the pandemic.

A Sister of the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus, she is assistant director for Pastoral Care of Migrants, Refugees and Travelers in the USCCBs Secretariat of Cultural Diversity.

Noting that 90 percent of all world trade depends on merchant seafaring, Sister Okereke said the presence of the faithful at the Mass and their prayers mean a lot to the people who do this important work.

In addition, more than 1.25 million seafarers work on board cruise ships, and 41 million people make their living from fishing.

Formerly called the Apostleship of the Sea, Stella Maris started in Scotland more than 100 years ago.

Around the world, this Catholic apostolate assists seafarers in meeting their basic needs. Stella Maris centers around the world arrange for visits of clergy and others in ministry to seafarers when they are in port.

Many of these centers have an onsite chapel for prayer services and Mass for crew members. The centers also provide workers with a shuttle to take them to local shopping centers, give them phone cards and/or the use of a free phone, computers and the internet.

They also have a lounge where crew members can watch television, read newspapers or magazines, play card games or simply relax.

The mission of Stella Maris remains today as clear as a sailing ships mast silhouetted against the rising sun: to reach out to seafarers, fishers, their families, all who work or travel on the high seas and port personnel, says a brochure posted about the ministry on the USCCBs website, usccb.org.

In every major country, a bishop serves as the Stella Maris episcopal promoter, overseeing the work of the national director.

In the U.S., the Stella Maris ministry has a presence in 53 maritime ports in 48 archdioceses and dioceses in 26 states. There are more than 100 chaplains and pastoral teams made up of priests, religious deacons and lay ministers.

Link:

Mary, Star of the Sea, protects mariners and is guide for all, bishop says - Arlington Catholic Herald

One of the fallacies, I believe, of modern thinking is that if one does everything they are supposed to do, then everything will turn out fine and life will be and become a journey of smooth sailing.

It is almost an assumption, a foregone conclusion: If I live a good moral life, keeping my nose clean, my checkbook in order, and work hard at the details, then things will turn out right, my kids will grow up to be fine adults, and all will be wonderful.

There almost seems to be an idealism that says if we live right and do good for our fellow man, then we should be exempt from the difficulties that seem to plague everyone else. We live our lives comparing ourselves to others, and often we come away saying, Well, I did pretty well this time around.

Difficulties come to somebody else. Someone else gets sick with COVID-19 or cancer. Someone else has the rebellious children. Someone else has the financial dilemmas. The bad things always happen to someone else.

Whats more? They probably deserved it. They did not live their life as God-honoring and faithful as you did, and therefore God is just getting even with them.

No matter what our situation in life may be, whenever we go through trials or difficult circumstances, our tendency is to dwell on the circumstances so much that we lose sight of the eternal.

How many times have you struggled with the thoughts that life should be smooth sailing, that life is a bowl of cherries, and that life should be a sweet-smelling aroma as in a garden of roses?

Reading Erma Bombecks famous book, If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? or listening to that once-popular old song, I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden (Or almost any other country-western song, for that matter!) should cause each of us to wonder if our view of life as a rose garden or a bowl of cherries is somewhat erroneous.

As I read the Scriptures, I am impressed that such pictures (as a rose garden, or a bowl of cherries), pleasant though they may be, are not the artwork of the Bible. In fact, the Bible throughout pictures the journey of life as a rough, pot-hole-filled road with difficulties, trials, and hardships throughout.

Peter in his first letter writes: Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you (1 Peter 4:11). He is saying to us that we should not look at difficulties as unusual, but as the norm for life.

If you think about the Bible stories you know, isnt that the case. There was always something that was going wrong, whether it be eating fruit from the wrong tree (Adam & Eve) or getting mad and killing someone you should not have (Cain & Abel) or dealing with a worldwide natural disaster (Noah), or being confronted with a personal moral dilemma (Abraham, in sacrificing Isaac). On and on we could travel through the pages of the Old Testament and everywhere we turn we find hardship and difficulty such as these.

But even in the New Testament, we see the same sorts of things. The disciples were getting into jams continually it seems, and they could not find their own way out of the dilemmas in which they found themselves.

One of my favorites of the Gospel stories is the account of Jesus leaving the disciples and going up to the mountain to pray. He sent them in a fishing boat to go over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

While He was praying a storm came up on the lake, and the disciples were again confounded, because they could not control the boat, and they could not keep the water out. They look up and see Jesus walking on the water towards them, and they get afraid. They think it is a ghost. He is appearing to them outside of their known sphere of reference for Him.

So they simply mock Him as a ghost. Peter even suggests that this ghost if He is really Jesus as he claims He is, will invite him (Peter) to walk towards Him on the water.

No one was more surprised than Peter to hear Jesus reply: Come! And no one was more intimidated into trying this than Peter. I mean, after all, he had to save face before these other guys who didnt make such a bold request of the ghost!

When he stepped out onto the water, I believe there was no one more afraid to let go of the boat than Peter, but when he realized he was walking, now that was exciting for all! But then he sank, and it was Jesus who had to come get him. (Check out Matthew 14:22-33).

This passage has reshaped my whole view of suffering.

First, Life is a journey of storms, moving from one storm to another. There might be respite from time to time, but storms are the norm of life not the exception. If you think about it, every mountain peak is surrounded by valleys.

Second, Jesus will come to us during the storms if we will look for Him. He does not want us to drown in the high seas of life.

Third, if we keep our eyes on Jesus we will not sink. Peter only began to sink when he started looking at the stormy sea instead of the steady Savior.

Our task then is to keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus, and He will see us through whatever storms we face, no matter how intense they get, no matter how afraid we may be.

If we keep our eyes on Him, He will see us through every storm we face.

God bless

Chuck Tabor is a regular columnist for the News Journal and a former pastor in the area. He may be reached at [emailprotected] .

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Eyes on the savior, not the storm - Wilmington News Journal, OH

Love, Death & Robots is, as always, tremendous. Season three is a series of dreams that unfolds with a kind of absolute possibility. Im never tired of the soft interlude between one episode and the next, when the potential for the following imaginative leap is gently waiting behind the credits.

For those just discovering this dreamscape of a series: its frankly some of the best of what sci-fi can be. That is, it gives us an elsewhere in which to imagine our own mode of beinga radically different set of rules that can include anything from sentient planets to robot anthropologists to murderous sirens. Each episode is an animated short, each roughly ten to twenty minutes long, that plunges the viewer into a fresh reality, with all the concise elegance of a masterfully told short story. If my admiration is shining through, its because its hard to contain. What else has this kind of imaginative scopethis let-it-loose creative freedom meets time and resourcesof Love, Death & Robots?

Patrick Osborne, of 2014s adorable Feast fame, opens this season with a vision of post-calamity Earth, via a lark of a scientific expedition across Earth, through the ruins and scattered bones of humanitys various modes of apocalypse, from survivalist camps to libertarian sea-nations to cannibalistic nuclear bunkers. This exploration is all conducted by a trio of lovable and macabre robots, reveling over the destruction of the species that in turn allowed their own mechanized civilization to rise. Human skeletons lie in telltale tableaux, explicating the various frantic, horrific, and inhumane ways humanity tried to cling to life. The robots laugh. They were mean to robots and then robots killed them! Humans are the actual worst!And it goes from there.

Some gems of the season include Emily Deans The Very Pulse of the Machine and series producer David Finchers Bad Travelingtwo vastly different stories of space exploration, both powered by brutally beautiful tension.

Finchers much-anticipated episode, only the second in the new season, shifts tone rapidly to a grotesque and nightmarish horror story of the high seas on a distant planet. Bad Traveling is a psychological standoff between a monster of the sea and monstrousness within the human crew. Cue the Independence Day-style alien puppeteering of corpses. Its more classic psychological thriller than anything else, and I loved it.

Deans The Very Pulse of the Machine is tailor-made to my nerdy English major heart. An astronaut is trapped in a grueling odyssey for survival on Io, one of the moons of Jupiter. But a simple quest for survival becomes a hallucinatory venture of wondrous possibility, swirling with Romantic poetry and unforeseeable horizons, voyaging through strange eons of thought, alone. Its gorgeously dreamlike, with the strange, instinctive dream-logic carried delicately into a roughly fifteen-minute run.

Throughout, the season rests on a preoccupation with powerspecifically masculine, militarized powerand its abuses for the sake of convenience, or simply of business as usual. In Jennifer Yuh Nelsons (of Kung Fu Panda!) brutal Kill Team Kill episode, a brass-tacks American military team embarks on a brutal warzone journey via simplistic animation that brings to mind comic book pages and GI Joe cartoons. The sci-fi emerges in the sudden appearance of a mechanical CIA-engineered bear-monster. War-machine-massacre horror unfolds, following the Whedonesquely funny crew of white men that seems to run on inexorable humor, including some pointedly distasteful Jihad-Joe Killing machine jokes. The vignette is a display of pointless slaughter in the name of more and more advanced technological weaponry.

Masons Rats, one of my favorite of the season, follows a similar tack, tracing the shifting sympathies of a futuristic Scottish farmer whose rat infestation has begun to exhibit an acceptable level of tool usee.g., has evolved into a small ramshackle civilization in his barn. Mason meets the rats with an increasing scale of violent extermination machines as the rats wage a hopeless war for survival. The Swarm tells another story of human hubris in the face of a foe they do not understand, while the season finale, Jibaro, depicts strange dynamics of sexual violence and military might, tumbled on their cliched heads. Night of the Mini Dead features a helpless U.S. military and a global wave of nukes. In Vaulted Halls Entombed introduces a maddening cosmic horror that shatters any perceived might the highly trained soldiers facing it might have foolishly assumed.

All over this season are stories of militarized failures, familiar structures of power confidently deployed and then destroyed. Besides simply being damn good storytelling, this new season speaks to a sense of helplessness in the face of intelligence too strange or new to be readily understood. Fear breeds a response of force over and over again. Humanity tries to reassert its power, its reason, its dominance.

This is undoubtedly a reductive response to a dynamic, genre-breaching, boundary-pushing series. Its almost as if its a deeply nuanced series that should be watched and appreciated on its own terms. But I cant help thinking of the insanity of bullets, bombs, and military preening in the face of an enemy that couldnt care lesssay, a virus spurring a global pandemic.

And as always: The series relies on gore to an extent that can be stomached largely because of the animated nature of the visuals. Dismemberment, bodies shredded by bullets, grotesquely distorted corpsesyou get one or more in just about every episode. While the level of gore can sometimes read as flippant, its deployed to great impact and is certainly effective in distinguishing Love, Death & Robots from a jaunty action-movie spectacle.

All-in-all: another triumphant season of a treasure-trove anthology.

But boy, it sure is something to have this fantastic sci-fi anthology generating income for the same streaming platform that repeatedly promotes stale, whiny comedians trying to proffer transphobia as edgy humor year after year. So yeah, humans are the absolute worst.

Demonic Pooh and Piglet Will Go on a Rampage in 'Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey' |The 'New Amsterdam' Season Finale Was a Bleak, Chaotic Mess

Header Image Source: Netflix

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'Humans Are the Actual Worst!': 'Love, Death, and Robots' Season 3 - Pajiba Entertainment News

Readers are invited to dive into the depths of the ocean this summer with the Jefferson public library free summer reading programs. With a theme of an Ocean of Possibilities, there will be five summer reading programs for youth of all ages to explore.

The summer reading program will include an infant-preschool program, a school age (K-4th grade) program and a teen (5th-8th grade) program, along with a new high school summer reading program. Because families are one of the most important parts in raising readers, Friday Family Days will start June 17.

Readers in the school age program will collect 52 sea creatures throughout the summer. These sea creatures will then be placed on the wall aquarium in the library. Activities will be held Monday afternoons from 1 to 3 for the school age program. There will also be activities available for children throughout the week if they arent able to attend Monday afternoons. All children will receive a bag, book, and a chance to win prizes for completing the summer reading program, including a new bicycle sponsored by Home State Bank. The winner will be announced at our end of the summer party on July 28 with Happy Faces Entertainment High Seas Adventures.

The infant-preschool program is for families with children birth to preschool. Summer story time will be Wednesdays at 10 am. Children who are registered and complete this program will receive a bag, a book and a prize.

Teens may chart their own course on how many books they will read. Teen activities will be held Thursday afternoons at the library.The program will end with the Waves of Danger murder mystery at Spring Lake on July 28. Registered teens in this program will also receive a bag and a chance to win some prizes.

New this year is the high school challenge summer reading program. Participants will receive a list of suggested books to read. They will receive a prize for completing each book challenge. We know that high schoolers are busy with jobs and sports, but hopefully they will find time to read this summer, even if its just 20 minutes a day, said youth services librarian Stephanie Hall.

Fridays will be Fin-tastic Family Friday. Every Friday at 10 am, starting June 17, families are invited to the library for socializing, activities and stories.

Registration for each of these freeprograms is open now until June 6. Registration can be done on the Jefferson public library website or in person at the library. Summer reading program sessions will start June 1.

These Oceans of Possibilities programs are made possible by sponsors Greene County board of supervisors, Friends of the Library, Home State Bank, Breadeaux Pizza, Peoples Bank and Heartland Bank. We thank them for their support, Hall said.

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An 'Ocean of Possibilities' at the Jefferson public library this summer - Greene County News Online

A Russian TU-95 bomber flies with Chinese H-6 bombers over the East China Sea, Tuesday, May 24, 2022. (Japan Ministry of Defense)

Japan scrambled fighter jets Tuesday in response to Chinese and Russian bombers flying near its airspace just as President Joe Biden met with leaders of the Quad grouping in Tokyo, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi told reporters Tuesday.

On the same day, South Korea scrambled fighter jets as Chinese and Russian warplanes passed through its air defense identification zone several times, Reuters reported Tuesday.

Near Japan, two Chinese H-6 bombers flew from the East China Sea to the Sea of Japan, where they joined a pair of Russian TU-95 bombers, Kishi said in a statement posted on the Ministry of Defenses website. The Sea of Japan is also known as the East Sea.

The two Chinese bombers were later replaced by a second pair of warplanes believed to be Chinese, and the four aircraft then flew out toward the Pacific Ocean, Kishi said.

None of the aircraft entered Japans national airspace, he said.

A nations air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, is a broad territorial boundary over which it maintains air traffic control for the sake of national security. It is much more expansive than national airspace, an area over which a state exercises full sovereignty and into which foreign military aircraft cannot enter without permission.

Kishi characterized the bomber flights as a provocation timed with the meeting of the Quad nations leaders.

Biden met with Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Anthony Albanese, Australia's newly elected prime minister.

The four nations make up the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, a loosely formed security pact with a stated purpose of promoting a free-and-open Indo-Pacific.

The cooperative is essentially a means of countering Chinas growing economic, political and military influence in the region, and the collaboration has not been welcomed by Beijing.

The China Ministry of Defense described Tuesdays sorties as a joint aerial strategic patrol, in a statement posted online Tuesday.

The militaries of China and Russia staged the joint aerial strategic patrol in accordance with their annual military cooperation plan, the statement said.

Kishi said this was the fourth long-distance joint flight between China and Russia around Japan since November.

A Russian IL-20 reconnaissance plane also flew over the high seas from the northern island of Hokkaido to the Noto peninsula on Japan's main island, Kishi said.

Meanwhile, four Russian and four Chinese warplanes entered South Koreas ADIZ on Tuesday, according to Reuters. The aircraft passed through the defense zone several times throughout the day, entering and leaving via the Sea of Japan, Reuters said in a report attributed to South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The aircraft included fighter jets and bombers from both China and Russia, the report said.

This was the first reported excursion of Russian or Chinese warplanes into South Koreas ADIZ since South Koreas newly elected president, Yoon Suk Yeol, took office on May 10, Reuters said.

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China and Russia sent bombers near Japan as Quad leaders discussed security in Tokyo - Stars and Stripes

The new Maserati MC20 Cielo has been revealed, ots the spyder version of the MC20 coupe. The model is shaped in a tunnel with clean lines that open up and become one with the clouds and stars.

The MC20 and MC20 Cielo are two distinct models yet united by the racing spirit and performance of genuine sports cars. Cielo offers a new driving experience courtesy of its electrochromic (smart glass) roof which at the touch of a button opens the top up to the sky and can be changed from opaque to clear.

Additionally, the state-of-the-art Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) technology allows you to look up at the stars even when the roof is closed. The Cielo will also be available in the exclusive Aquamarina colour; a three-layer paint is based on a racing-inspired grey with an iridescent mica in aquamarine.

The PrimaSerie Launch Edition is a limited series which makes the connection between the spyders elegance and sporty features even more exclusive. The limited series has exclusive features including Aquamarina bodywork, ice-colored interior and golden details.

The MC20 Cielo is powered by a petrol twin-turbo V6 Nettuno engine with technology derived from Formula 1. The engine generates a maximum output power of 630 hp in 3000 cc of displacement.

Additionally, the North Sails Capsule collection has been designed exclusively for the MC20 Cielo, its extraodinary success on the high seas enables every generation of explorers to push the boundaries of challenge. The upshot is a collection of high-performance clothing directly inspired by the PrimaSerie Launch Edition and its exclusivity.

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Maserati MC20 Cielo: The Spyder Version is Finally Here - GTspirit