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The Sunshine fire that has been burning west of Boulder since early Sunday morning appears to be human-caused, Boulder County sheriffs officials said late in the day. The fire has scorched 62 acres and is now 50 percent contained, officials said.

Cmdr. Mike Wagner said the general area where the fire started, at Sunshine Canyon Road and Timber Trail, has a network of unofficial social trails and is known to have lots of transient campsites.

The Boulder Office of Emergency Management said firefighters plan to monitor the perimeter of the 62-acre fire and focus on protecting structures overnight. No structures have been damaged.Evacuation orders for residents of 426 homes remain in place.

Crews hope to contain the blaze fully on Monday.

Wagner said residents of the more than 400 homes evacuated early this morning were prohibited from returning at night, with high winds forecast around midnight. Re-evacuating at night is more difficult, he said.

Things get exponentially more complex in the dark, he said.

Fire officials plan to reassess the evacuations in the morning, with an update expected around 8 a.m., Wagner said.

Theyre hoping they can keep control of it overnight and really start mopping up tomorrow, he said.

No homes or structures have been damaged or destroyed, officials said, and there have been no reported injuries.

The contained area is off the heel of the fire near Sunshine Canyon Drive and the Centennial Trailhead, officials said.

Onlookers gathered at a roadblock on Fourth Street and Mapleton Avenue just east of Sunshine Canyon and worried the fire would spread into town or that they would be evacuated. But Belle Star, a resident of Boulder for the past 17 years, said she was not so scared while taking shelter atEast Boulder Community Center.

I woke up to the sound of pounding at my front door at 5 a.m., and policemen were meticulous about making sure everybody in my condo was out, she said, explaining that officials wrapped yellow caution tape around door handles indicating they had spoken with a resident. I grabbed my sister and my cat and I left. Your priorities change when they want you to act fast.

Star lives at Fourth and Pearl Streets and said shehas experienced other natural disasters before, including the Boulder Flood in 2013 and several fires.She said her main concern was the wind picking upand spreading the fire.

They might have it out by tonight, but you never know, she said. It all depends on the wind and which way it blows.

Wagner said:I think it really hinges onwhat the weather does tonight.Were not able to utilize aircraft at night, and evacuations are harder.

Officials were concerned earlier in the day about gusting winds because the fire was within a mile of downtown.

The Boulder Office of Emergency Management placed more than 1,000 phone calls ordering predawn evacuations. The fire was reported about 2:30 a.m. Sunday. The calls resulted in 426 homes being evacuated.

Six aircraft dropped water and slurry, saidBarb Halpin, a spokeswoman for the Boulder Office of Emergency Management. Residents were warned to avoid Wonderland Lake, where water refills were conducted.

Gov. John Hickenlooper authorized support from the Colorado National Guard, including equipment such astwo UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, one CH-47 Chinook helicopter and a refueling truck from the Colorado Army National Guard.

Aircraft from Buckley Air Force Basewere assisting.

The OEM placed about 3,700 callsto those onpre-evacuation notice, telling residents to beprepared to leave. About 8p.m., 836 homes remained on pre-evacuation.

Police were patrolling the area at night to address concerns about possible burglaries to evacuated homes.

Wagner said 250 state and local firefighters and 50 fire vehicleswere involved throughout the day Sunday. One firefighter told Wagner that there was no moisture in the soil of the burn area and said it was like June.

The Boulder officeswebsite experienced high traffic and intermittently dropped offline during the day. Users were asked to refresh often or get information on Twitter at @BoulderOEM oron Facebook.

Conditions are ripe for fire throughout the Front Range, said Bernie Meier, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder.Boulder had a record 80-degree high Saturday, breaking the record of 77 for March 18 set in 1907.

Winds were light, about 5 mph at 8:30 a.m., but by 11 a.m., the weather servicewas recording gusts of 40 mph, with sustained winds of 5 to 10 mphpushingthe flames in the wooded area a couple of miles west of Pearl Street.

Humidty was low, at 14 percent.

The fire was first reportedon the mountainside nearSunshine Canyon and Timber Lane when someone noticed glowing on the mountain, and we sent deputies, said Gabi Boerkircher, a spokeswoman with the Boulder Office of Emergency Management.

Boulder County Public Health advises people to avoid outdoor activities if they can see or smell smoke.

Some residents in the pre-evacuation zone in the Highland neighborhood were watching the fire from Eben G. Fine Park and waiting to see if the wind picked up before packing.

Ben Egner said that althoughhe hadnt packed anything yet, he has a list in his head that includes musical instruments, books, his hard drive and his dog, Petunia. He said he found out about the fire after getting a text from a neighbor early this morning.

For another neighbor, Beth Prehn, it was a phone call from a friend at 5:30 a.m. that alerted her. At about 7 a.m., she took a picture of flames lighting up Sunshine Canyon.

That was scary, she said.

Now, looking at smoke instead of flames, I feel a lot better, she said.

Officials closed Boulder Canyon Drive to all traffic.

The general evacuation perimeter is Poorman Road to the west, Fourth Street in the city of Boulder to the east, Boulder Canyon Drive to the south and Sunshine Canyon Drive to the north, according to the sheriffs office.Traffic is being rerouted on a portion of Boulder Canyon Drive at Sixth Avenue, down Arapahoe, and returning to Boulder Canyon Drive, the office of emergency management said.

Within the city of Boulder, the area of Fourth Street east to Broadway, and Mapleton Avenue to Canyon Boulevard are on pre-evacuation notice.

A Public Call Center line is open for non-emergency calls: 303-413-7730.

Residents ordered to evacuate can use the East Boulder Community Center, 5660 Sioux Drive.

Large animals can be evacuated to the Boulder County Fairgrounds. Small animals can be taken to the East Boulder Community Center, but residents are asked to bring crates if possible.

Multiple fire agencies responded, including the Boulder Rural Fire Protection District, the Boulder Fire Department, the Greeley Fire Department and the Sheriffs Fire Management Program. The Denver Fire Department has dispatched five engines and 21 workers.

Seth Frankel, who was warned that he and his family may need to evacuate, said he had packed up generations of things that cant be replaced and was ready to go if the air quality got worse.

He said smoke was pouring toward neighborhoods and many dead trees were combusting and sending black smoke into the air less than a half-mile from his home. But he and his wife, a Boulder native, and three daughters have dealt with fires and floods before.

Its always alarming and always on your mind, but its not an uncommon sensation around here, said Frankel, who has lived in Boulder for 20 years.

Frankel got word of the fire early Sunday from a neighbor who received a warning call, and he was outside with neighbors watching the flames and smoke. But he let his daughters, 9, 11 and 13, sleep in.

Its still alarming, but theres no panic, Frankel said. We will be long since gone when parents are no longer smiling.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Watch the Denver Post documentary, The Fire Line: Wildfire in Colorado]

Original post:
Officials suspect human cause in Boulder's Sunshine fire - The Denver Post

On March 21, 1960, thousands of black people in Sharpeville marched to their local police station to protest the enforcement of pass laws. At that time, every black (African, Indian or coloured) person in South Africa had to carry a dompas, which stated where they were allowed to be. Any person caught by police without it was arrested.

Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan Africanist Party, rallied his party members and others in Sharpeville to participate in the march. The protesters left their passbooks at home, and gave themselves up for arrest.

Police opened fire on the demonstrators without orders, killing 69 people. The day was from then on known as Sharpeville Day.

Drum magazine's assistant editor Humphrey Tyler reported the following at the time:

The police have claimed they were in desperate danger because the crowd was stoning them. Yet only three policemen were reported to have been hit by stones - and more than 200 Africans were shot down. The police also have said that the crowd was armed with 'ferocious weapons', which littered the compound after they fled.

I saw no weapons, although I looked very carefully, and afterwards studied the photographs of the death scene. While I was there I saw only shoes, hats and a few bicycles left among the bodies. The crowd gave me no reason to feel scared, though I moved among them without any distinguishing mark to protect me, quite obvious with my white skin. I think the police were scared though, and I think the crowd knew it.

After the African National Congress came to power in 1994, the name of the commemorative day was changed from Sharpeville Day to Human Rights Day, and declared a public holiday. At the advent of democracy in South Africa, days of commemoration were changed from people- and site-specific names to accommodate everyone in the country.

Read the original post:
Human Rights In South Africa Since Sharpeville, How Far Have We Come? - Huffington Post South Africa (blog)

WASHINGTON For the first time, aUnited Nationsreport has recognized biodiversity and healthy ecosystems as essential to human rights.

The report, authored by U.N. Special Rapporteur John Knox, a human rights expert and professor of international law at Wake Forest University, comes amid a biodiversity crisis that many scientists have pegged as the beginning of Earths sixth mass extinction event.

Biodiversity is really necessary for the full enjoyment of rights to food, water, health the right to live a full and happy life, Knox told The Huffington Post on Thursday. Without the services that healthy ecosystems provide across the board, we really cant enjoy a whole range of human rights. And healthy ecosystems really depend on biodiversity.

The assessment, which Knox presented to the U.N.s Human Rights Council at a meeting this month in Geneva, Switzerland, concludes that, in order to protect human rights, states have a general obligation to protect ecosystems and biodiversity.

The U.N. has not taken a formal position on the matter. The Human Rights Council is considering whether to adopt a resolution recognizing the relationship of biodiversity and human rights. Knox said a decision is expected by the end of the month.

THOMAS SAMSON via Getty Images

In many ways, the rate of species extinction which humankind has sped uproughly 1,000 times, according to a 2005 assessment is as much of a crisis as climate change, Knox says. Yet it gets far less attention. As he notes in the report, the Secretariat of theConvention on Biological Diversity found in 2010 that nations have failedmiserably in meeting adopted targets to reduce biodiversity loss.

Had the international community met its goals, Knox told HuffPost, it would have gone a long way toward protecting the variety of life on Earth.

Im not saying Im the great expert on what needs to happen on biodiversity, he said. Im saying that the people who are the experts have spoken and states have agreed with them on what needs to happen on biodiversity, and [theyre]not living up to that commitment.

Ultimately, biodiversity loss has grave and far-reaching implications for human well-being, Knox writes. Those implications include reduced fishery and agriculture yields, depleted sources of medicine, and increased infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders. Most vulnerable are the indigenous communities that directly depend on healthy ecosystems for food, water and even culture.

Knox calls on nations to minimize damage to ecosystems and biodiversity, both from private entities and government agencies, as well as recognize and protect those most vulnerable, including indigenous populations.

Inger Andersen, director general of theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature, was among those who praised the report.

People have the right to benefit from nature for their livelihoods and for rewarding and dignified lives, Andersen said during a human rights panel event last week. This includes, for example, the right to food for all, for present and future generations; the right to water; the right to housing; the right to health and many other social, economic and cultural rights. All of these depend on functioning ecosystems and biodiversity.

Knox said he has a hard time understanding how this issue, with all of its effects on human health, doesnt get more attention. And he finds the conversation taking place in the U.S. troubling.

President Donald Trump has proposed deep budget cuts across the executive branch, including slashing the Environmental Protection Agencys fundingby 31 percent and the Interior Departments by 12 percent. Trump has also repeatedly called climate change a hoax and promised to pull the U.S. out of the historic Paris climate agreement.

We should really be ramping up our support for greater protection of biodiversity, not stepping back from it, Knox said. Climate change is making the biodiversity crisis much much worse. As the Trump administration seems to be pulling back from commitments to deal with climate change, among the other serious problems with that for the environment, its also going to have really disastrous effects to biodiversity.

Late last year, a report by the World Wildlife Fund warned that up to 67 percentof Earths wildlife could vanish by 2020.

Read Knoxs full report here.

See the article here:
UN Expert: Biodiversity Is Essential To Human Rights - Huffington Post

Steve Murray sometimes gets together with other old-timers in the real estate industry, shares some wine and inevitably gets around to remarking, I sure wouldve thought it wouldve changed more by now.

Murray, president of consulting firm Real Trends, has been tracking for 40 years how U.S. real estate agents do their jobs. And over the past decade, the Internet has disrupted almost every aspect of a transaction that sits at the core of the American Dream. Everyone now has free access to information that used to be impossible to find or required an agents help.

But as a new home-buying season kicks off, one thing remains mostly unchanged: the traditional 5-to-6-percent commission paid to real estate agents when a home sells.

While the Internet has pummeled the middlemen in many industries decimating travel agents, stomping stock-trading fees, cracking open the heavily regulated taxi industry the average commission paid to real estate agents has gone up slightly since 2005, according to Real Trends. In 2016, it stood at 5.12 percent.

Theres not a shred of evidence that the Internet is having an impact, Murray said, sounding like he almost cant believe it himself.

The stickiness of the real estate commission is a source of fascination for economists and curiosity for consumers who are doing an increasing share of the home-buying legwork themselves online. It also offers potential lessons for workers in other industries worried about the Internets destructive powers. The Web has changed how agents hustle for a share of the estimated $60 billion paid each year in residential real estate commissions. But it hasnt taken their jobs. In fact, the number of agents has grown 60 percent in the past two decades.

It wasnt supposed to be like this.

Experts have been predicting the demise of real estate agents for years. Consider the title of a 1997 article in the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management: The Coming Downsizing of Real Estate: The Implications of Technology.

In the mid-2000s, the arrival of real estate tech start-ups like Zillow, Redfin and Trulia spurred a fresh dose of anticipation. Realtors sacrosanct commission rates of 6 percent may be in danger, warned 60 Minutes in 2007. Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York professor who examines the Internets effects, wrote a 2006 blog post predicting, Real estate agents are next.

Agents thought so, too.

The industry was fearful of the Internet. They didnt think theyd have jobs, said Leonard Zumpano, a retired finance professor who for years ran the University of Alabamas Real Estate Research Center.

The Web automated and simplified huge swaths of a process that once was complicated and time-consuming. With a few taps on a smartphone, home buyers and sellers now can find information that once required digging through musky deed books at the county recorders office. And the new technology has made agents more efficient. In many ways, their job is easier now.

Yet agents stand to earn more in commissions today than in the pre-Internet era, because of stable commission rates and surging home values.

In 1997, the typical commission on a median-priced U.S. home, adjusted for inflation, was $16,600.

Today, that commission is $20,131.

Its a mystery to me, Zumpano said. I wouldve expected commissions to go down.

In 2005, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop to talk about why commissions had not fallen more. The American Bankers Association argued that the commission rate could be cut in half in a truly competitive market. Attendees at the workshop appeared to place great faith in the power of the Internet to lower commissions.

In a typical home sale, the commission is paid out of the sellers proceeds and split between the sellers and buyers agent. The rate is negotiable. But the traditional rate has held firm, even as an agents main advantage information has been eroded by the Internet.

Experts dont have a good answer for why these commissions have survived the Internets onslaught. They point to several potential factors. A home sale is a massive financial transaction. Its complicated. And it doesnt happen often, with home buyers staying put for an average of 12-to-13 years. So intimidated consumers keep turning to agents for help.

Regulations may have slowed the pace of change. Twenty states and the District set minimum levels of service for agents, dissuading brokers willing to do less for lower fees. Ten states also ban agents from rebating a portion of the commission to their clients. But commission rates do not vary wildly among these states, analysts say.

The National Association of Realtors also has worked to reinforce the role of agents through lobbying and advertising, sometimes in unconventional ways. Last year, the group struck a deal with the ABC sitcom Modern Family to work into an episode that character Phil Dunphy is a true real estate expert a licensed Realtor. And national broker Century 21 is running ads with the tagline, Good luck, robots, adding theres no robot for insight or hustle or a handshake.

The efforts appear to be working. The association reports 89percent of home sellers used an agent in 2016 on par with the previous five years. At the same time, for-sale-by-owner transactions fell to their lowest rate 8percent since the association began tracking the data in 1981.

Who is going to write a contract? Fill out a disclosure statement? Anticipate whats coming on the market? asked association president Bill Brown. Theres a human element to buying and selling a home that cant be replaced.

But the Internet is expert at discounting that human element.

That was the worry that greeted Zillow when it was launched in 2006 with executives from Expedia and Hotwire, travel sites that were on their way to pushing out human travel agents.

There was fear in the beginning, Zillow chief marketing officer Jeremy Wacksman said.

Agents fought to keep Zillow from accessing private databases known as the multiple listing service where agents post homes for sale and which many considered an agents ultimate advantage. Zillow eventually tapped those listings. But it decided not to challenge the industry head-on, opting to focus on real estate ads.

The reception was harsher for Redfin, a tech-heavy broker in Seattle that tried to cut agent commissions. It started out selling homes for a flat $3,000 fee and rebated part of the home buyer agents commission.

Competing agents have threatened us with violence, intimidated our customers and tried to block their offers, Redfin chief executive Glenn Kelman said in testimony before Congress in 2006.

Redfin changed course. Today, Redfin more closely resembles a traditional broker. It has its own local agents. It sells homes for a 1 to 1.5 percent commission. Redfin agents are paid a salary and a bonus tied to customer satisfaction.

Redfin remains a small player, with 1-to-2 percent of the U.S. market. But in some big cities such as Chicago, Seattle and the District it holds a 5 percent share. Kelman said he believes Redfin will continue to grow as a new generation of buyers and sellers enters the market.

Kids who grew up buying textbooks on Amazon are now buying houses on Redfin, Kelman said.

Other agents are not standing still. They have adopted technology, too.

A peek at Samina Chowdhurys smartphone shows how.

A veteran agent in Ellicott City, Md., Chowdhury has one app that scans closing documents and one that writes contracts. Another accepts digital signatures. She has an app that allows her to keep tabs on sales leads and another to unlock residential lockboxes. She uses an online video editor for making home tour videos. And while Chowdhury speaks five languages, if she runs into trouble she can call up a translation program.

None of these technologies were here 10 years ago, she said.

Chowdhury has seen other agents struggle with the pace of change. But shes done well. She estimates that she made $300,000 last year.

The push of technology into real estate is what motivated Chris Speicher to leave his job at Microsoft to join his wife, Peggy Lyn Speicher, as a real estate agent. He figured he could help.

Its no longer about going to the real estate agent because they hold the truth they have the data, Chris Speicher said.

They work in a team model, with staff divided among different duties. They target potential home buyers with online ads. They get leads from Zillow. Last year, the Bethesda-based team helped close $100 million in deals.

But Speicher, like many agents, feels the pressures of change, too. He has noticed more pushback from home-buying customers, driving that commission down closer to 2.5 percent.

Murray, of Real Trends, found that commission rates tend to fluctuate with the health of the housing market almost as if the Internet hadnt happened.

In 2005, at the housing markets height, buying and selling were easy. The market was tight. And the national average commission stood at a low 5.02 percent. Four years later, during the housing crash, with almost twice as many houses on the market, commissions rose to 5.38 percent.

Now the commission rate is falling as the housing market heats up again, Murray said.

He noted the rate has drifted down 16 percent over the last 25years, but surprisingly, all of that decline happened before 2004.

Murray does see one way the Internet could attack commissions: It could consolidate the highly fragmented market for agents. Today, two-thirds of consumers still find their agents through knowing them or by a personal referral. But if the Internet weakens that bond, popular agents could win more market share.

And theyre going to cut rates, Murray said. They can be more productive now, so theyll do volume instead. Theyll be more prone to discounting.

It will be agents doing what the Internet hasnt.

More here:
The real estate industry has something the Internet can't offer: The human element - Washington Post