Keeping up with the news is hard. So hard, in fact, that we’ve decided to save you the hassle by rounding up the most significant, unusual, or just plain old mind-blowing stories each week. This week was the Groundhog Day of news reporting. After a roundup last week where we covered a devastating earthquake in Mexico and a tropical storm laying waste to the Caribbean, both stories resurfaced once more with a vengeance. There was deja vu elsewhere as well. We can only hope next week’s roundup is significantly different and significantly less tragic.
10 Mexico Was Hit By Its Deadliest Earthquake In Decades
On Friday, September 8, a massive earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico, devastating the country’s south and killing nearly 100 people. At the time, it was reported as a horrible, once-in-a-lifetime tragedy. Sadly, it turned out that Mother Nature was only warming up. Just over ten days later, on Tuesday this week, yet another quake struck the beleaguered country, this time right next to the capital. The result was carnage on a horrifying scale.At the time of this writing, the death toll is standing at “over 230” and is sadly expected to rise. In Mexico City itself, entire buildings collapsed. Homes were devastated. Streets came to resemble war zones. In perhaps the most gut-wrenching case of all, a school collapsed, killing around 30 children. Or perhaps the worst case was when a church collapsed during a two-month-old baby’s baptism. The baby and ten members of her family died. There are concerns that lax planning regulations may have increased the death toll. In an interview with The Guardian, one expert said the school should have been constructed to survive such a quake. As in Haiti in 2010, cost cutting may have cost lives.
9 Hurricane Maria Trashed The Already Devastated Caribbean
Earlier this month, Category 5 storm Irma cut a swath through the Caribbean and Florida, leaving dozens dead and entire countries in ruin. As with Mexico’s first quake, it sadly turned out that Irma was just the warm-up act. This week, Hurricane Maria, which also reached Category 5, steamrollered through the already battered Caribbean. It left yet more death, despair, and destruction in its wake.The damage was indiscriminate and breathtaking. On the island of Dominica, reports indicated that 90 percent of all buildings were destroyed. The British Virgin Islands, already ruined by Irma, saw what was left of their infrastructure crumble. For Puerto Rico, Maria was the most powerful hurricane to hit in nearly a century. As of this writing, the entire island has lost power, with the governor warning the blackout could last for months. Now the hope is that this series of storms is finally over, and the affected nations can get on with the task of rebuilding. Fingers crossed we don’t have to revisit this topic again this year.
8 Terrorists Tried To Bomb The London Underground (Again)
The London Tube has a grim significance where terrorism is concerned. It was here on July 7, 2005, that Islamist bombers managed to kill 50 people in the deadliest attack on British soil (if you discount the Lockerbie bombing, which happened in the air). This week, others tried to repeat their success. During the morning rush hour, a bomb exploded on a crowded carriage at Parson’s Green. In different circumstances, it could have killed dozens.Thankfully, these aren’t “different circumstances.” The bomb’s trigger failed to work properly. Instead of creating a gigantic blast, it created a flash of flame that burned around 30 people but killed no one. Of those burned, all but a handful suffered only minor injuries. Police have now arrested six people—mostly teenagers—on suspicion of Islamist terrorism. As the BBC noted, this takes the total number of attacks in England this year to five, with another six foiled. At no other point since the IRA bombing campaign of the 1970s has England been so frequently targeted.The majority of the attacks have been directed or inspired by ISIS, with only the Finsbury Park attack being right-wing in nature. We can only pray there are not more to come.