Evening News

Good evening. This is Travis Bailey, and welcome to the Evening News.

 

We’ll start with the ongoing crisis in Luanda. The clashes between rioters and security forces started one week ago, after the depletion of the stocks of flour and vegetables in stores. There is still no plan to replenish these stocks, as the food situation in the sub-equatorial Africa remains grave. The lack of rain during the last crop season is pointed out as the main reason behind this situation.

 

Meanwhile, at least twelve people are believed to have died during the latest clashes, bringing the week’s total to almost one hundred deaths. There were also thousands of detainees made during the week, although it is known that most of them were released within hours due to the lack of accommodations.

 

Mayor Joaquim Marinho stated that strongest measures will be put in place to curb the riots, while his cabinet works on a way to bring in more food. The oceanic habitat Elation, which was moving along the African West Coast, offered to give some of its food supplies to the people of Luanda in order to help lessen the crisis.

 

Similar food riots have been happening in Lisbon, Riyadh, Rada and Jakarta, but the deadlock in Angola is seen as the most serious.

 

This situation comes at a time when a breakthrough was announced regarding food production. The arrival of more stocks of phosphor and deuterium from the mining colonies in Europa, along with the blueprints for more efficient fusion-powered hydroponic farms, has allowed researchers to duplicate the output of food production during tests. There is also the hope that new genetically engineered plants may be best suited to fully use the advantages of this technology, probably even replacing the previous strands, which have been showing high death rates on certain regions of the globe.

 

Now on to other news.

 

North America was hit today by another series of destructive tornado storms. Unconfirmed reports state that some farms in the Midwest were severely damaged. This comes as a blow to the American government’s plan for repopulating the region. Even so, the current President, Amanda House, has declared that these projects will continue, and they will indeed use technology developed for the colonization of Europa, as promised earlier this week. At the same time, the American universities, along with their peers from the rest of the world, keep working on the development of reliable methods of climate control, although specialists insist that any possible breakthrough is still decades away, at best.

 

In South America, Argentine miners outbound to Europa became stranded on the ground when one of the two Chrysaor space planes assigned to the region suffered a malfunction as it was about to take off. This leaves the continent without a space plane, given that the other one is currently being overhauled. Japan has offered to send its own Chrysaor to alleviate the situation, and is currently waiting for a decision from Buenos Aires.

 

The United Earth Council has also approved today a multi-billion dollar project to intervene in the Amazonian Pampa, in order to regrow the jungle that existed there just a few decades ago. The multi-staged program will be developed during the next ten years, and there is hope that within that timeframe parts of the once vast Amazonian Jungle may be restored. This project also intends to use genetic databanks to revive extinct species, although this aspect is contested by some critics.

 

In Europe the construction of the new neighborhoods in Attica-Athens to house the growing population has been halted once again. The works’ administrators reported that there is a lack of the materials needed to build the necessary infrastructure, and the dwindling quotas of raw materials caused by the lack of productivity in the colonies of Europa is pointed to as the main cause for the fiasco. Proponents of continuing the works stated that similar situations existed during the reconstruction of Tunis and Rangoon, and that the downgrade of the living standards brought by disregarding certain infrastructures turned out to be not as grave as feared.

 

Still in Europe, the famous movie stars Artyom Gurevich and Zoe Potez, considered the most powerful couple in the entertainment industry, are going to divorce. The representatives from either side refused to advance details, but a hypothesis circulating in the tabloids pointed towards “ideological divisions”. It should be noted that Gurevich is an advocate of the Europan Glacial cult, and has been quite vocal about any attacks towards it, including recent comments from his wife.

 

In North Africa, the Berber Revolt keeps spreading, and reports of the fighting on the Nile Front suggest the local supporters of the revolt may be using MAVs. Government officials have declared such fears as “unsubstantiated”.

 

Violent clashes between pro-Indian and pro-Chinese militias keep occurring in the Himalayan region. Officials from both governments insist they have nothing to do with the incidents and that both governments are cooperating in the exploration of the Jovian System. Nevertheless, the UEC has issued an official statement in which it requests both countries to restrain from supporting the militias and work on ending the violence.

 

Meanwhile, the shores of Southeast Asia are still being hit by heavy rains. The largest cities have been suffering with the disruption of public transportation and blackouts. All flights to the region have been cancelled for the time being. Deeper inland, many traditional farmlands are reported to have been destroyed, which is causing grave concerns to the local governments.

 

A legal victory was gained by the Australian industrial magnates, when the evaluation of the current labor law, which was changed seven years ago, declared that it was indeed legal to hire people as young as fourteen years old for the recycling industry. The CEOs of these companies issued a joint statement in which they congratulate themselves for the victory, and also defend their practices, deeming them important both to protect the resources our planet as left, as well as a practical way for the underprivileged families to improve their earnings.

 

In the Pacific, the government of Tuvalu, which is currently exiled in Seoul, Korea, has officially dropped any attempts to save the small island nation, which has been mostly taken over by the rising sea levels. Efforts to artificially expand and rise the islands, which consumed the few resources Tuvalu had left, were mostly ruined by the constant tropical storms. Most of the population is now applying to go to Europa.

 

For now, this was Travis Bailey for the Evening News. Have a good night.