September 16, 2014 Edition

Looters ransacked shops in Mexico’s Los Cabos beach Monday, September 15, after Hurricane Odile destroyed homes, flooded streets and wrecked hotels packed with tourists. Odile crashed ashore Sunday, September 14, packing winds of 205 kilometers (125 miles) an hour, tearing down trees and power lines and ripping roofs off homes in Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. It was listed as category 3 hurricane in the five-scale Saffir-Simpson scale, but weakened to a category one Monday as winds slowed to 20 kilometers (13 miles) an hour. Even as the storm moved up the peninsula, the US Hurricane Center warned of more heavy rainfall and flooding.

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The European Union urged the international community Monday, September 15, to boost aid to make up for “precious time” lost in the response to west Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak, as the UN Security Council announced an emergency meeting on the crisis. The United Nations said last week that Ebola cases – which have killed more than 2,400 people in west Africa since it erupted earlier this year – are multiplying “faster than the capacity to manage them” and the president of Liberia, with more than half the victims, has warned the outbreak is destroying the country’s social fabric. The United Nations is appealing for $600 million (465 million euros) for supplies, with countries asked to send doctors, nurses, beds, trucks, equipment and other vehicles to the affected nations.

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Mayon Volcano in the province of Albay was placed on “Alert Level 3” on Monday evening, September 15, after showing signs of “relatively high unrest,” the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) said. PHIVOLCS-DOST raised the alert status of Mayon Volcano from Alert Level 2 to Alert Level 3 which is equivalent to a “Critical Alert” in the agency’s 5-level alert system. This means that the volcano is exhibiting relatively high unrest, magma is at the crater, and that an eruption is possible within weeks.

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The United States bombed the Islamic State (ISIS) near Baghdad, the first time the US has targeted the militants close to the Iraqi capital, US officials said Monday, September 15. A US defense official told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity that American warplanes carried out one air strike near Baghdad and another near Mount Sinjar, in the north of Iraq, in the past 24 hours. Monday’s announcement that US warplanes had targeted the militants near Baghdad marks an escalation in the scope of the mission. The strikes destroyed six ISIS vehicles near Sinjar and an ISIS fighting position southwest of Baghdad that had been firing on Iraqi forces.

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This year’s UN General Assembly (UNGA) opening on September 16, Tuesday, is shaping up to be one of the most eventful in the world body’s 69-year history. With multiple crises jostling for news space and the world’s attention, heads of state and diplomats will be swamped discussing problems ranging from terrorism, climate change, Ukraine, Gaza to Ebola, and more. Among the things to expect at the UNGA are Philippine President Benigno Aquino III demanding climate justice from top polluters, US President Barack Obama presiding over the UN Security Council meeting to tackle the strategy against ISIS, and negotiations for the successor to the 8 Millennium Development Goals, a 15-year roadmap for the world to fight poverty, hunger, and disease, which is set to expire in 2015.

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Secretary Corazon Soliman said she would rather work harder in the massive rehabilitation effort, while she admitted that her Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) at fault for 7,527 food packs that got spoiled in transit from Cebu to Tacloban. In a press conference on Monday, September 15, Soliman acknowledged that the packs, which cost P2.78 million ($62,775), got wet because the goods were not properly covered on the barge, which also got delayed in the docking. The social welfare secretary took responsibility, but also appealed to the public to consider the bigger picture. “These 7,000 food packs comprise 0.17% of the 4 million that we have given out,” she said.

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According to an audit of the US space agency’s program to detect and protect the Earth from incoming asteroids, just $1 million of the program’s $40 million annual budget is spent on strategies to deflect an incoming asteroid or evacuate areas in danger of impact. NASA was tasked by Congress in 2005 to establish a program for tracking near-Earth objects (NEO) greater than 140 meters in diameter (460 feet), to decide on their threat and to catalogue 90% of these objects by 2020. “While the program has discovered, categorized, and plotted the orbits of more than 11,000 NEOs since 1998, NASA estimates that it has identified only 10% of all asteroids 140 meters and larger and will not meet the 2020 deadline,” said the audit by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin.

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In a new assault against its rival Apple, Samsung released new advertisements that attempt to poke at Apple’s design shift to a phablet-sized smartphone. Aside from a text advertisement noting how Apple “changed their minds,” Samsung Korea and Samsung USA also came out with their own advertising attacks against Apple’s new iPhone and Apple Watch.

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A new official trailer for the upcoming ‘Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1’ trailer has funs buzzing with excitement. This particular teaser trailer shows off Katniss’ brand new weapon, as well as shows Katniss making some important demands to the leaders of District 13. There’s plenty to see in this trailer, including glimpses of a more subdued Effie Trinket, the affable Caesar Flickerman, Peeta, Haymitch, Gayle, Beetee, and Finnick Odair. New faces, including Natalie Dormer as film director Cressida, are also featured.

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Tuesday, September 16, marks the start of the PH+Social Good summit in Manila. International and Filipino will speakers talk about their passions and how technology has helped them change the game. We will look at how technology can be used to deal with climate change and the impact it leaves behind; how identity and movements are formed today; how journalism is changing; how businesses can transform and empower women; how efforts to collapse the digital divide are moving, helping bring the Internet to the next billion people; and finally, how you can help make sure there are no casualties in the next typhoon.

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Learn more about the last PH+SocialGood summit here.