The Royals Released Official Photos of Prince Louis’ Christening

Kensington Palace has released four official photos to mark Prince Louis’s christening.

Taken by leading celebrity portrait photographer Matt Holyoak, who also photographed the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on their 70th wedding anniversary, the snaps show the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with all of their children for the first time.

A larger group shot features the royal baby alongside his closest relatives, including the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Pippa Middleton and James Matthews, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and Carole and Michael Middleton.

Haiti’s prime minister resigns amid fuel price hike fallout

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitian Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant resigned Saturday amid calls for him to step down over his handling of a failed plan to raise fuel prices that set off a wave of deadly protests.

Lafontant told Haiti’s Chamber of Deputies that he sent President Jovenel Moise his resignation letter and the president had accepted it. Moise has not yet commented publicly.

The prime minister’s abrupt resignation came ahead of a vote on a motion to censure Lafontant, a first step toward asking that Moise name a new prime minister to form a Cabinet to handle the crisis. The prime minister is the second highest official in Haiti after the president.
Lafontant was to answer questions about the July 6-8 riots that followed the government’s attempt to raise fuel prices by up to 51 percent as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund. At least seven people were killed and dozens of businesses were looted during the unrest.

Instead, Lafontant used the opportunity to announce his resignation, while in various parts of Haiti’s small protests were held demanding the head of state step down.

As the session began, chamber president Gary Bodaeu wrote on his Twitter account that the legislature “is at a crossroads in history; it must assume its responsibilities.” He had earlier called the price hikes “untimely” and “inoperative.”
Lafontant suspended the fuel prices increases after protests erupted last week but the disturbances continued and calls for the prime minister to resign grew, including from the opposition and some business groups.

Lafontant, a 57-year-old doctor who took office in March 2017, had said the price hikes of 38 percent to 51 percent for gasoline, diesel and kerosene were needed for Haiti to balance its budget.

Government officials agreed to reduce subsidies for fuel in February as part of an assistance package with the IMF. The agreement also included increased spending on social services and infrastructure and improved tax collection in an effort to modernize the economy of one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere.

SOURCE

Ángela Ponce will become the first transgender woman to compete in the Miss Universe pageant.

MADRID — Asked when she first realized that she was a girl, Ángela Ponce answered with her own question: “And when did you first know you were a boy?”
After winning Spain’s national beauty contest last month, Ms. Ponce will become the first transgender woman to compete in the Miss Universe pageant. But she is also on a mission to challenge traditional concepts of gender and beauty, as well as to break down what she sees as unacceptable barriers in the fashion industry.

“Having a vagina doesn’t make a woman,” she said in an interview. “Even if many people don’t want to see me as a woman, I clearly belong among them.”

Nurse accused of tampering with drips at hospital, killing dozens of people

A Japanese nurse is accused of tampering with the medical devices of dozens of near-death patients in order to kill them while she was off duty — all so she could avoid delivering the news to the patients’ grieving families.

Ayumi Kuboki, 31, was arrested Saturday in connection with the death of Sozo Nishikawa, 88, who was poisoned in 2016 at the Oguchi Hospital located in Yokohama, the Japan Times reported.

Kubo told investigators she did not like the responsibility of telling a patient’s family a loved one had passed away. She allegedly targeted patients who were close to death by tampering with their intravenous drips so another nurse on duty would have to ….

Elon Musk’s plan to bring a mini-submarine to rescue the Thai boys

The 12 Thai boys and their coach have been rescued from the cave in northern Thailand where they’d been stuck for more than two weeks.

The end of the rescue operation also brought an end to one creative scheme to save them: Elon Musk’s “kid size” submarine.

Let’s back up. To help out the rescue mission, Musk’s engineers from SpaceX and Tesla had built and tested a mini-submarine for the boys to get out of the cave because they were not swimmers. But rescuers ultimately decided to bring the boys of out of the cave on stretchers guided by professional divers. The sub was never used.

In tweets on Monday, the head of SpaceX and Tesla said he would leave the sub behind, as it “may be useful in the future.” A Boring Company spokesperson tells Vox that a SpaceX team met with Rear Admiral Apakorn Youkongpaew and members of the Royal Thai Navy in Chiang Rai on Wednesday and the mini-sub is now in their possession.
The pod was described by Musk as “a tiny, kid-size submarine … Light enough to be carried by 2 divers, small enough to get through narrow gaps. Extremely robust.” The idea behind it was to rescue the kids without them needing to swim or use air tanks.

“Although [Musk’s] technology is good and sophisticated, it’s not practical for this mission,” one of the rescue operation coordinators told the Guardian.
Musk’s involvement with a rescue mission halfway around the world began Friday when the boys’ fate was still very uncertain. The SpaceX and Boring Company CEO tweeted that he would go to Thailand to help with the efforts. He was welcomed by the Royal Thai Navy, who said on their Facebook page that engineers from his companies could potentially help with “location tracking, water pumping or battery power.”

Since then, Musk has publicly brainstormed several … interesting ideas on Twitter.

His first plan was to create an “air tunnel underwater,” using a long tube and blowing it up with air so the boys could simply walk through. Next, his team was working on building an “inflatable tube with airlocks.”

He then moved on to the pod, which was made, in true Muskian fashion, from the transfer tube of SpaceX’s Falcon rocket.

They began testing the submarine on Sunday in an Los Angeles pool; Musk again provided us with updates via Twitter.

But when Musk continued tweeting about his sub even after the rescue mission was over, he got some pretty funny tweets in response:

PeterNorway
@classiclib3ral
I’ve seen like a hundred tweets thanking Elon Musk for helping save the Thai kids and not a single one thanking me even though we contributed the exact same amount to the rescue effort

@ConanOBrien
Elon Musk didn’t save the Thai soccer team, but he will put them on a Tesla waitlist.\

@Seinfeld2000
NAVY SEAL: this was an extremely dificult mission and we are so glad that-

Elon musk BERST in to press conference

ELON: i GOT it, WATERPROOF TELEPORTATION DRONES my team can have a prototype in 72 earth days

NAVY SEAL: the boys havebeen rescued

ELON: ANOTHER POINT FOR ELON!!!

Musk went into the cave himself; he posted a video on his Instagram, where we can see the near-absolute darkness in the cave, save a few flashlights.

Jerome Taylor of the AFP reported that a spokesperson for the Thai prime minister said he was “very touched that Mr. Musk had personally travelled to Chiang Rai province to offer assistance, especially with his ingenious solutions.”

After reports that his submarine was impractical, Musk defended himself via Twitter, posting emails of his correspondence with British diver Richard Stanton, who helped lead the rescue and was part of the original diving duo that found the boys:

BBC News (World)
✔
@BBCWorld
· 10 Jul
Elon Musk’s offer ‘not practical’ for cave mission, Thai rescue chief says https://bbc.in/2u1WT0t pic.twitter.com/CXRy7l4Ia1

Elon Musk
✔
@elonmusk
The former Thai provincial governor (described inaccurately as “rescue chief”) is not the subject matter expert. That would be Dick Stanton, who co-led the dive rescue team. This is our direct correspondence: pic.twitter.com/dmC9l3jiZR

Musk then argued that the technology and submarine design could still be used in the future to rescue people in other “dangerous environments,” and could “work as an escape pod in space.”

Elon Musk keeps getting involved in unfolding crises
This is not the first time Musk has offered assistance in a crisis.

Last year, after the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Maria left island-wide power outages in Puerto Rico, Musk announced that he would send Powerpacks, Tesla’s utility battery packs, to the island.

As of a few months ago, the company had sent 1,000 of their battery systems to 662 locations in Puerto Rico, and Electrek reported that the batteries powered a hospital, sewage treatment plant, and water pumping station.

On June 3, Musk vaguely tweeted that Tesla has “about 11,000 projects underway in Puerto Rico.” But that number is impossible to verify and the details of these projects are unclear.

Meanwhile, Musk has been criticized for underdelivering on certain products; for example, Tesla had production issues with its Model 3 car and missed several deadlines, causing its shares to drop by 6 percent. (Although the stock recovered when they met their production target in June, it has dropped again over the past week.)

In a New Yorker piece titled “Elon Musk Has Delivery Issues,” Jeffrey Rothfeder wrote: “In the auto industry, Musk’s production assertions are viewed as the manufacturing equivalent of vaporware — an advance that is promised but has very little chance of becoming a reality.”

But as the author of Musk’s biography, Ashlee Vance, told Vox, his ability to consider ideas that others might dismiss as “crazy” is part of why he has been so successful.

Tesla, for one, continues to push international initiatives. It plans to build a plant in Shanghai to produce 500,000 cars in a year, and has already built the world’s largest lithium ion battery in Australia.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Musk left the mini-sub behind in the cave. A Boring Company spokesperson reached out to Vox to clarify that the Royal Thai Navy now has possession of it.

SOURCE: https://www.vox.com/2018/7/10/17553820/elon-musk-thai-cave-rescue-submarine

Tears flow as Thai boys and parents see each other for first time since cave rescue

July 11–CHIANG RAI, Thailand — Thai authorities aired the first footage Wednesday of the Thai boys rescued with their coach after being stranded in a flooded cave complex for days, in a tightly controlled event designed to protect the children from media attention and showcase pristine hospital facilities.

The boys, rescued in three groups from the Tham Luang Nang Non caves in northern Thailand, were in good health mentally and physically, according to doctors, with only one showing signs of a lung infection. They had lost weight — an average of 4 1/2 pounds each — but were hungry and largely unharmed from their ordeal.

Another boy who earlier showed signs of a lung infection has recovered, doctors said.
Video showed the boys wearing masks while resting in beds in Chiang Rai Prachanukroh Hospital in the city of Chiang Rai near the rescue site. Several flashed a victory sign.

Some parents wept as they gazed excitedly at their children through a window looking onto the hospital, some waving. All wore yellow shirts in celebration of the birth month of Thailand’s King Rama X.

Some families were allowed in the ward, although they had to remain six feet from the boys and no hugging was allowed, doctors said.
Rear Admiral Apakorn Youkongkaew, chief of the Thai Navy SEALS, said there had been no choice but to bring the group out of the cave swiftly, because oxygen levels were depleting rapidly and they would not have survived much longer.

Thai cave rescue options include possibility of ‘buddy dive’

Chiang Rai, Thailand (CNN)Thai officials ruled out any immediate attempts to evacuate 12 football players and their coach trapped deep inside a system of caves in northern Thailand on Saturday despite concerns over low oxygen levels underground and poor weather forecasts.

“No, not today,” Narongsak Osottanakorn, the governor of Chiang Rai province, said after being pressed by reporters on rescue efforts.
Officials are considering a rescue plan involving a “buddy dive” — where an experienced adult diver would swim with each boy — to evacuate the team members, according to a US official familiar with the joint rescue operation.

Thai divers would lead the mission and US divers would preposition oxygen tanks, the US official said. The rescue team also includes divers and workers from Australia, the United Kingdom, and other parts of Europe and Asia.

Thai military officials have been briefed, the source said, and the country’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was to be told about the plan Saturday morning.

The rescue mission could begin as soon as the weekend, but no decision has been made whether to proceed, the US official said.

Thailand cave rescue: Ex-navy diver dies on oxygen supply mission

A former Thailand navy SEAL has died while working to save 12 boys and their coach from the submerged Tham Luang cave complex, the New York Times reports. The death comes as a heavy blow to the rescue mission, as monsoon rains threaten further flooding and as oxygen levels inside the chamber have started to drop.

Around 1:00 am local time this morning, Saman Gunan, a 38-year-old retired Thai navy SEAL, was on his way out of the cave system after delivering extra oxygen canisters a long the route to the trapped boys and their coach when he ran out of oxygen and lost consciousness. His partner, who was unable to revive him, brought his body back to the mouth of the cave.

“His job was to deliver oxygen,” Passakorn Boonyaluck, the deputy governor of the Chiang Rai region, told reporters. “He did not have enough on his way back.”

Meet Tommy Connolly, The World’s Youngest Grandpa At Only 23

A person’s early twenties are often littered with college courses, parties, and travel. For stand-up guy Tommy Connolly, his early twenties came with some heavy responsibilities that were completely unanticipated.

This young man has become the world’s youngest grandfather, and his story is truly remarkable!
Life Was Good

At 23-years old, Tommy had a lot on his plate. Between working part-time, maintaining his relationship with his girlfriend, Olivia, and going to school at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, he had very little free time. On top of all that, Tommy was also the star of his university’s track and field team and regularly competed.

With what seemed like an already jam-packed schedule, Tommy’s life would get end up getting much busier after receiving a random Facebook message from a relative he hadn’t heard from in over 10 years.

The Message That Changed His Life Forever

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‘Dead’ Russian journalist shows up alive at Ukrainian news conference

May 30 (UPI) — Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko surprised everyone Wednesday by showing up alive at a news conference on Ukrainian television, a day after he was reported dead, telling reporters his death was faked as part of a special intelligence operation.

Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday Babchenko had been killed at his home by an assailant, leading Moscow and Kiev to blame each other for his death.

Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, left Russia last year after criticizing the Moscow government.

In a shocking twist Wednesday, he turned up alive at a news conference and revealed he was informed a month ago about the plan to fake his death.

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