Families have grown increasingly anxious as they awaited word from rescue teams tasked with descending a flooded coal mine in northern Mexico to rescue 10 workers nearly 24 hours after an accident confined the crew deep underground.

The miners became trapped on Wednesday after their excavation work caused a tunnel wall to collapse, triggering flooding in three wells.

Mexico's Civil Protection agency did not immediately respond on Thursday when asked about efforts to pump out the water, and if levels were rising.

Its director, Laura Velazquez, said earlier on Thursday that time was everything, and several hundred officials were "working day and night" to assist with the rescue.

Soldiers, emergency workers and rescue dogs were deployed after the latest disaster to strike Mexico's main coal-producing region in Coahuila state, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.

"What I want with all my soul is that we rescue the miners," he told reporters.

"We must not lose faith. We must not lose hope," he added.

'I want my husband to come out all right'

Families keeping vigil remained on edge.

Erika Escobedo, the wife of one of the trapped miners, 29-year-old Hugo Tijerina, told the Reuters news agency she spent all night watching rescue efforts at the site in the northern border state of Coahuila.

"They say the water is rising," she said, describing bigger water extraction pumps she saw hauled to the site.

"I want my husband to come out all right," said Escobedo, her voice breaking in a phone interview from the site, as she watched rescuers bore another tunnel to try to reach the miners.

For now, she has told her three children not to worry about their father and that he will come home okay.

"Unfortunately, there's not much hope," Jose Luis Amaya, whose cousin and brother-in-law was among those trapped, told Milenio TV on Wednesday night.

Five other miners escaped the accident. They all received medical treatment, and two have been discharged from the hospital.

Still, Elizabeth Vielma, the mother of three men who work at the site but were not involved in Wednesday's accident, said she worried about conditions there.

"They just give them the drills and send them down," she said.

Source: agencies

A Texas jury has ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a six-year-old boy who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, marking the first time the Infowars host has been held financially liable for repeatedly claiming the deadliest school shooting in US history was a hoax.

The Austin jury, which announced the order on Thursday, must still decide how much the Infowars host must pay in punitive damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators who were killed in the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

The parents had sought at least $150 million in compensation for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. 

Jones' attorney asked the jury to limit damages to $8 — one dollar for each of the compensation charges they are considering — and Jones himself said any award over $2 million "would sink us."

It likely won't be the last judgment against Jones over his claims that the attack was staged in the interests of increasing gun controls. A Connecticut judge has ruled against him in a similar lawsuit brought by other victims' families and an FBI agent who worked on the case. 

Parents suffer from 'complex' PTSD

Jones, who has portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, conceded during the trial that the attack was "100 percent real" and that he was wrong to have lied about it. 

But Heslin and Lewis told jurors that an apology wouldn't suffice and called on them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through.

The parents testified Tuesday about how they've endured a decade of trauma, inflicted first by the murder of their son and what followed: gunshots fired at the home, online and phone threats, and harassment on the street by strangers. 

They said the threats and harassment were all fuelled by Jones and his conspiracy theory spread to his followers via his website Infowars.

A forensic psychiatrist testified that the parents suffer from "complex post-traumatic stress disorder" inflicted by ongoing trauma, similar to what might be experienced by a soldier at war or a child abuse victim.

At one point in her testimony, Lewis looked directly at Jones, who was sitting barely 10 feet away.

"It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this — that we have to implore you, to punish you — to get you to stop lying," Lewis told Jones.

Jones was the only witness to testify in his defence. 

And he came under withering attack from the plaintiffs' attorneys under cross-examination, as they reviewed Jones’ own video claims about Sandy Hook over the years, and accused him of lying and trying to hide evidence, including text messages and emails about the attack. It also included internal emails sent by an Infowars employee that said "this Sandy Hook stuff is killing us."

Source: AP

The fashion industry is constantly scrutinised and criticised for using leather as raw material for its products. Now" leather" which is sourced from plants is now all set to revolutionise the fashion world and business as per a report in smithsonianmag.com.

This new eco-friendly leather which is vegan in nature has been produced by California-based biotech company MycoWorks from fungi. The Guardian reports that the company transforms mycelium which is derived from the mushrooms’ root structure, into a substance whose appearance and feel are that of animal-based leather.

In a statement, Patrick Thomas who is part of the MycoWorks Board of Directors and also a former CEO of Hermés said: "It's the first time that a company is able to produce a vegetal product which is matching or even exceeding the quality and durability and aesthetics of a natural one. It's a super achievement.”

Even though it is a mushroom-based substance, through mycelium cells which MycoWorks engineers, it is made rigid. The cells grown in 3-D structures, interweave densely, becoming tough material and has been christened as Fine Mycelium. This as per MycoWorks website has the strength, durability, and performance of traditional leather.

This material differs from other varieties of vegan leather created from mushrooms. These are made from compressed solid foam that is created naturally by mycelium and does not have the feel and look of the animal and synthetic leather in the absence of engineering.

Grown in trays, the Fine Mycelium can be fitted to the exact specifications of the designer thereby doing away with waste generated from excess scraps, said the Guardian report. Following the tanning and finishing, the harvested Fine Mycelium is called Reishi. Significantly, this leather, which feels like the one obtained from animals, is processed using chromium-free method, a chemical which forms a part of the tannery wastewater, reported Refinery29.

In March 2021, this vegan leather made its high fashion debut as Hermés debuted their Victoria bag, which featured MycoWork's Fine Mycelium material.

Creation of leather with plants has come at an appropriate time when the scientists are working to combat the growing crisis of climate change and animal agriculture. Bovine leather affects the environment quite seriously, in fact more than any other kind of fabric. This is because of deforestation and emission of methane that is associated with raising of animals for leather and meat, the Guardian report stated.

According to EcoWatch livestock as a single factor makes up for 15 per cent of the world’s greenhouse emissions.

There are other plant-based leathers in the market like the one made from pineapple leaf fibre and those made from cactuses.

Some critics highlight that this leather from fungi is available as a luxury object as double-face cashmere and silk organza. To be sustainable in the true sense of the word, it has been available at lower prices so that it is affordable. Further, sceptics wonder if these companies can provide enough raw material for all products.

Yet, Fine Mycelium which is carbon-neutral, is a sustainable option for making long-lasting goods.

Sharing his views Merlin Sheldrake, a biologist said: "We have been trained as consumers to think in terms of a straight line whereby we buy something, use it, and throw it away. Fungi can inform thinking about fashion on lots of levels. This is about material innovation, but it's also about the culture of making endless new things, and what we can learn from thinking in terms of nature and of cycles instead.”

Sheldrake has authored the book “Entangled Lives: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures”.

ISTANBUL (AP) — The first grain ship to leave Ukraine and cross the Black Sea under a wartime deal passed inspection Wednesday in Istanbul and headed on to Lebanon. Ukraine said 17 other vessels were “loaded and waiting permission to leave,” but there was no word yet on when they could depart.

A joint civilian inspection team spent three hours checking the cargo and crew of the Sierra Leone-flagged ship Razoni, which left Odesa on Monday carrying Ukrainian corn, a U.N. statement said.

The Joint Coordination Center team included officials from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations, who signed deals last month to create safe Black Sea shipping corridors to export Ukraine’s desperately needed agricultural products as Russia’s war upon its neighbor grinds on.

Ukraine is a major global grain supplier but the war had blocked most exports, so the July 22 deal aimed to ease food security around the globe. World food prices have been soaring in a crisis blamed on the war, supply chain problems and COVID-19.

Although U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Razoni’s journey a “significant step,” no other ships have left from Ukraine in the past 48 hours and no explanations have been given for that delay.

A U.N. statement said inspectors “gained valuable information” from the Razoni’s crew about its voyage through the Black Sea maritime humanitarian corridor and the coordination center was “fine-tuning procedures.”

The Turkish Ministry of National Defense tweeted a picture of an inspector reaching into the Razoni’s hold and touching some of its 26,527 tons of corn for chicken feed. The Razoni’s horn rang out as the inspectors left the ship, and then it headed off to Lebanon.

The checks seek to ensure that outbound cargo ships carry only grain, fertilizer or food and not any other commodities, and that inbound ships are not carrying weapons.

An estimated 20 million tons of grain — most of it said to be destined for livestock — has been stuck in Ukraine since the start of the 6-month-old war. Ukraine’s top diplomat said Wednesday that more ships are ready to carry much-needed grain and food out of the country’s Black Sea ports.

“Further ships are already ready for departure. They will depart from the ports that are part of the grain initiative in accordance with the agreed schedule, and we hope that everything will work out and the Russian Federation will not take any steps that would destroy these agreements,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said at a joint press conference in Kyiv with his Estonian counterpart.

Kuleba said the U.N.-backed deal “is beneficial to Ukrainian farmers, it is beneficial to the Ukrainian economy, and it is beneficial to the world.”

″ It is now Ukraine that is, literally, saving the world from further growth in food prices and from hunger in individual countries,” he said.

Still, a Black Sea voyage entails significant risks because of the war. Two civilian ships hit explosive devices there last week near the Danube River’s Bystre estuary, according to Bridget Diakun, a data reporter at Lloyd’s List, a global shipping publication.

Analysts say authorities’ first priority is bringing out vessels that have been stuck for months at the three Ukrainian ports covered by the deal. Sixteen ships loaded with grain have been stuck at the ports of Odesa and Chernomorsk since Russia’s invasion, according to Lloyd’s List.

Even slower than that is the effort to bring ships into Ukraine’s ports to extract the millions of tons of grain in storage.

Insurance brokers are being “cautious, slow, so far,” said David Osler, insurance editor at Lloyd’s List. “At this stage, everyone’s hesitant.”

Grain stockpiles are expected to keep growing. Despite the war, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal estimated his country would harvest up to 67 million tons of grain this year, up from 60 million tons last year.

A senior official from a leading Ukrainian farm association reckoned Ukraine would have about 50 million tons of grain for export this year.

Before the war, Ukraine exported around 5-6 million tons of grain per month, according to Denys Marchuk, the deputy head of the All-Ukrainian Agrarian Council. He said Ukrainian authorities are hoping to include more Black Sea ports in the export deal.

In other news Wednesday:

__ Russian forces kept up their bombardment of the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv. Regional governor Vitaliy Kim said the shelling damaged a pier, an industrial enterprise, residential buildings, a garage cooperative, a supermarket and a pharmacy. The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, told The Associated Press that 131 civilians have died so far in the city from Russian shelling and 590 others have been seriously injured.

__ The Ukrainian military said Ukrainian forces pushed back over a dozen Russian assaults in the key eastern province of Donetsk and claimed that none of the Russian attempts to advance over the previous 24 hours were successful. Still, Russian shelling killed at least four civilians in Donetsk province, Ukraine’s presidential office said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered all those in the embattled province to evacuate as soon as possible.

__ The U.N. chief says he’s appointing a fact-finding mission in response to requests from Russia and Ukraine to investigate an explosion at a POW prison in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine that reportedly killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war and wounded another 75. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters that he doesn’t have authority to conduct criminal investigations but does have authority to conduct fact-finding missions. Both sides said the assault last Friday was premeditated with the aim of covering up atrocities.

__ Moscow has drastically cut how much gas it sends to Europe, igniting fears that it could stop sending the much-needed fuel. All across Europe, nations are rushing to cut energy use this summer so they can fill up gas storage tanks for the cold winter ahead.

PARIS (AP) — Fanning out like urban guerrillas through Paris’ darkened streets well after midnight, the anti-waste activists shinny up walls and drain pipes, reaching for switches to turn off the lights.

Click. Click. Click.

One by one, the outdoor lights that stores had left on are extinguished. It’s one small but symbolic step in a giant leap of energy saving that Europe is trying to make as it rushes to wean itself off natural gas and oil from Russia so factories aren’t forced to close and homes stay heated and powered.

Engineer Kevin Ha and his equally nimble friends had been acting against wasteful businesses in Paris long before Russia started cutting energy supplies to Europe in a battle of wills over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. As such, the campaigners were precursors of the energy economy drive becoming all the rage in France, Germany and elsewhere. Their message — that everyone can contribute — is almost word-for-word what public officials from cabinet ministers to mayors are saying now, too.

“Everyone can have a positive impact at their own level, by adopting good practices, by doing the right things to reduce their overall energy footprint,” the 30-year-old Ha said on a recent night of light-extinguishing on the Champs-Élysées boulevard.

The stakes are high. If Russia severs the supplies of gas it has already drastically reduced, authorities fear Europe risks becoming a colder, darker and less-productive place this winter. It’s imperative to economize gas now so it can be squirreled away for burning later in homes, factories and power plants, officials say.

“Europe needs to be ready,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “To make it through the winter, assuming that there is a full disruption of Russian gas, we need to save gas to fill our gas storages faster. And to do so, we have to reduce our gas consumption. I know that this is a big ask for the whole of the European Union, but it is necessary to protect us.”

And although Europe is scrambling to get energy from elsewhere, any difficulties this winter could be a harbinger of worse to come if Russian gas supplies are completely severed and stay off through 2023, said France’s minister overseeing energy, Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

“If gas deliveries are cut by the end of the year, that will mean we’ll have a full year without Russian gas, so the following winter could be even harder,” Pannier-Runacher told French senators.

Hence the mounting appeals — already familiar to exasperated parents of wasteful teenagers everywhere — for Europeans to take shorter showers, switch off power sockets and otherwise do what they can.

Germany had been getting about a third of its gas from Russia, making the EU’s biggest economy and most populous nation conspicuously vulnerable. Energy saving is in full swing, with lights going off, public pools becoming chillier and thermostats being adjusted.

The glass dome of the Reichstag, the parliament building in Berlin, is going dark after it closes to visitors at midnight, and two facades will no longer be lit. Legislators’ office temperatures will drop by 2 degrees to 20 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) this winter. Berlin City Hall, the Jewish Museum, two opera houses and the landmark Victory Column with panoramic views are among about 200 sites in the German capital that will no longer be lit at night.

Saunas are closing in Munich’s municipal swimming pools, which have chillier water now, too. There’ll only be cold showers at public pools in Hannover, part of a plan by the northern city to cut its energy use by 15%.

“The sum of all the contributions will help us get through this winter and be prepared for the next one,” said Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor and economy minister. He also told news weekly Der Spiegel he has slashed the time he spends showering.

“It will be a demanding, stony road, but we can manage it,” he said.

With a campaign dubbed “Flip the Switch,” the Netherlands’ government is urging showers of no more than five minutes, using sun shades and fans instead of air conditioning, and air-drying laundry.

Under a law passed Monday in often-sweltering Spain, offices, stores and hospitality venues will no longer be allowed to set their thermostats below 27 degrees Celsius (81 degrees Fahrenheit) in summer, nor raise them above 19 degrees Celsius in winter.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez asked office workers to ditch neckties, presumably to lessen the temptation to use air conditioning. He led by example, appearing at a news conference in an open-necked shirt.

The Italian government also is recommending limits on heating and cooling in public buildings.

In France, the government is targeting a 10% reduction in energy use by 2024, with an “energy sobriety” drive. Mayors are also waging their own war on waste, with fines introduced for air-conditioned or heated stores that leave front doors open; others are working to limit the pain of soaring energy prices.

The 8,000 residents of Aureilhan, in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southwestern France, have been adjusting to nights without street lights since July 11. Extinguishing all 1,770 of them from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. will save money that Mayor Yannick Boubée would rather spend on roads and other maintenance. Otherwise, he said, the town’s 84,000-euro ($86,000) lighting bill in 2021 was on course to nearly triple next year.

“When it comes down to it, there’s no reason to keep the lights on at night,” he said by phone. “It is shaking up our way of thinking.”

Next will be convincing townspeople to agree to less-heated classrooms when schools reopen.

“We’re going to ask parents to put a pullover on their children, all measures that don’t cost anything,” he said. “We have no choice, unfortunately.”