Fog can be considered a cloud at ground level. The processes forming it, however, are usually different from those that form clouds.

Like clouds, fog is made up of condensed water droplets which are the result of the air being cooled to the point (actually, the dew point) where it can no longer hold all of the water vapor it contains.
For clouds, that cooling is almost always the result of rising of air, which cools from expansion. But for fog, which occurs next to the ground, there are usually other reasons for this cooling.

For instance, rain can cool and moisten the air near the surface until fog forms.

Or, as is more often the case, infrared cooling of a cloud-free, humid air mass at night can lead to fog formation – this is called “radiation fog”. Radiation fog is most common in the fall, when nights get longer, air masses begin to cool, and land and water surfaces that have warmed up during the summer are still evaporating a lot of water into the atmosphere.

Finally, a warm moist air mass blowing over a cold surface (usually snow or ice, or over a cold ocean surface) can also cause fog to form-this is called “advection fog”.

How, when and where does fog most likely occur?

•    Fog generally forms when the relative humidity reaches 100% at ground level.
•    The ability of fog to form suddenly and disappear as quickly is determined by what side of the dewpoint the temperature registers.
•    Long, cool autumn nights cause the air near the ground to chill, causing the formation of fog to be prevalent in fall.
•    Fog is most likely to occur at night or near dawn when the temperature of the day is normally at it’s lowest.
•    The cool ground air forms fog and dew as the air-cools and water vapors condense into tiny droplets of water.
•    Fog is typically thicker in low places as the heavy air flows downward.
•    Fog can also form over cold, snow-covered ground as warmer air moves in.
•    Fog forms often near creeks, waterways and river valleys as the water increases the humidity in the air.
•    Fog is most likely to occur when the dewpoint level is very near the current temperature reading, being no more than 5 degrees F. in difference.
•    Fog evaporates after sunrise as the sun warms the fog from the top down. The thicker the fog, the longer it takes to dissipate.

Fog is a collection of liquid water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth’s surface.[1] While fog is a type of stratus cloud, the term “fog” is typically distinguished from the more generic term “cloud” in that fog is low-lying, and the moisture in the fog is often generated locally (such as from a nearby body of water, like a lake or the ocean, or from nearby moist ground or marshes).[2] Fog is distinguished from mist only by its density, as expressed in the resulting decrease in visibility: Fog reduces visibility to less than 1 km (5/8 statute mile), whereas mist reduces visibility to no less than 1 km.[3] For aviation purposes in the UK, a visibility of less than 5 km but greater than 999 m is considered to be mist if the relative humidity is 70% or greater – below 70% haze is reported

Fog begins to form when water vapor condenses into tiny liquid water droplets in the air. The main ways water vapor is added to the air: wind convergence into areas of upward motion,[7] precipitation or virga falling from above,[8] daytime heating evaporating water from the surface of oceans, water bodies or wet land,[9] transpiration from plants,[10] cool or dry air moving over warmer water,[11] and lifting air over mountains.[12] Water vapor normally begins to condense on condensation nuclei such as dust, ice, and salt in order to form clouds.[13][14] Fog, like its slightly elevated cousin stratus, is a stable cloud deck which tends to form when a cool, stable air mass is trapped underneath a warm air mass.[15]

Fog normally occurs at a relative humidity near 100%.[16] This can be achieved by either adding moisture to the air or dropping the ambient air temperature.[16] Fog can form at lower humidities, and fog can sometimes not form with relative humidity at 100%. A reading of 100% relative humidity means that the air can hold no additional moisture; the air will become supersaturated if additional moisture is added.

Fog can form suddenly, and can dissipate just as rapidly, depending what side of the dew point the temperature is on. This phenomenon is known as flash fog.[17]

Another common type of formation is associated with sea fog (also known as haar or fret). This is due to the peculiar effect of salt. Clouds of all types require minute hygroscopic particles upon which water vapor can condense. Over the ocean surface, the most common particles are salt from salt spray produced by breaking waves. Except in areas of storminess, the most common areas of breaking waves are located near coastlines, hence the greatest densities of airborne salt particles are there. Condensation on salt particles has been observed to occur at humidities as low as 70%, thus fog can occur even in relatively dry air in suitable locations such as the California coast. Typically, such lower humidity fog is preceded by a transparent mistiness along the coastline as condensation competes with evaporation, a phenomenon that is typically noticeable by beachgoers in the afternoon. Another recently-discovered source of condensation nuclei for coastal fog is kelp. Researchers have found that under stress (intense sunlight, strong evaporation, etc.), kelp release particles of iodine which in turn become nuclei for condensation of water vapor.[18]

Fog commonly produces precipitation in the form of drizzle or very light snow. Drizzle occurs when the humidity of fog attains 100% and the minute cloud droplets begin to coalesce into larger droplets.[19] This can occur when the fog layer is lifted and cooled sufficiently, or when it is forcibly compressed from above. Drizzle becomes freezing drizzle when the temperature at the surface drops below the freezing point.

The thickness of fog is largely determined by the altitude of the inversion boundary, which in coastal or oceanic locales is also the top of the marine layer, above which the airmass is warmer and drier. The inversion boundary varies its altitude primarily in response to the weight of the air above it which is measured in terms of atmospheric pressure. The marine layer and any fogbank it may contain will be “squashed” when the pressure is high, and conversely, may expand upwards when the pressure above it is lowering

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By Sylvia Westall and Ahmed Hagagy

Then-lawyer Thikra al Rashidi, who is currently Kuwait’s Social Affairs and Labour Minister, submits her registration as a candidate for Parliament for the 2nd District, in Shuwaikh in this November 9, 2012 file photo. Rashidi has called for the flow of foreigners coming to Kuwait to be reduced by 100,000 every year for the next decade, mainly by cutting down on unskilled workers entering the country and targeting people who are working illegally. Her ministry’s proposal is still in the planning stages but it has coincided with separate steps taken by other government bodies towards foreigners. Kuwait has deported around 3,000 Indians since the latest campaign started, the Arab Times reported in June 2013, quoting the Indian ambassador. The Indian embassy told Reuters the figure was “approximate”. Other nationalities have also been affected. REUTERS/Stephanie Mcgehee/Files

KUWAIT, June 12 (Reuters) – The narrow, cracked streets of the district of Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, down the road from Kuwait’s main airport, would normally be bustling with Indian and Bangladeshi workers by late morning, just before the summer sun becomes unbearable.

But since Kuwaiti police launched a series of raids about two months ago, saying they were tracking down illegal labourers, the streets are almost empty and many small businesses have closed their doors, residents say.

In the last few months, authorities have deported thousands of mainly low-paid Asian workers from the Gulf Arab state for working without the correct visa or residency papers or for repeat traffic offences, according to local media and residents. A government minister has called for a reduction in the number of “excess” foreign workers in Kuwait.

The oil-rich country relies heavily on foreign workers to perform low-paying and strenuous jobs in sectors such as construction and services; foreigners make up about 69 percent of Kuwait’s 3.8 million population.

Pressure to limit their numbers has been growing among some Kuwaitis who argue that too many workers are a burden on the state. They say that instead of bringing in foreigners, Kuwait should be trying harder to cut unemployment among its own nationals, which analysts estimate above 3.0 percent.

If this pressure continues to grow, it could have a major effect on Kuwait’s economy, limiting its access to low-cost labour, while reducing flows of money to countries which supply foreign workers such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines.

“Kuwait is keen to regulate the labour market because of the imbalance in the demographics,” Social Affairs and Labour Minister Thikra al-Rashidi told Reuters, saying the number of foreigners in Kuwait had increased 12.4 percent between 2008 and 2012.

“We have respect for all the expatriates who have participated in the labour market and contributed to the development of Kuwait,” she said, but added that there was an excess of unskilled “marginal” workers who were not contributing to the economy in a positive way.

Kuwait’s effort to limit expatriate workers is mirrored in several other Gulf countries, which want to curb large foreign populations to address demands for jobs among their own citizens.

Saudi Arabia has deported tens of thousands of illegal foreign workers this year; in February, Oman’s government said it would impose a cap on the number of foreigners.

Rashidi has called for the flow of foreigners coming to Kuwait to be reduced by 100,000 every year for the next decade, mainly by cutting down on unskilled workers entering the country and targeting people who are working illegally.

Her ministry’s proposal is still in the planning stages but it has coincided with separate steps taken by other government bodies towards foreigners.

Kuwait has deported around 3,000 Indians since the latest campaign started, the Arab Times reported this week, quoting the Indian ambassador. The Indian embassy told Reuters the figure was “approximate”. Other nationalities have also been affected.

“The police caught so many people. They came at any time, morning, afternoon, night,” said Rashed, a 36-year-old Bangladeshi barber in Jleeb.

Before the raids, he usually had around 20 customers by late morning, but that morning there had been none, he said, declining to give his full name for fear of getting in trouble with authorities. He said he had not experienced such a strict crackdown since he came to Kuwait 11 years ago.

Contacted by Reuters, the Interior Ministry did not give figures for the number of people deported for traffic offences or incorrect paperwork, but it said laws were applied fairly.

“It is the right of any state…to take appropriate legal action to ensure stability and security of the country,” it said in a statement. It added, “The Interior Ministry denies the charge that it is targeting expatriates.”

Diplomats from the Indian and Bangladeshi embassies have appealed for an amnesty period before workers are deported, similar to one granted by Saudi Arabia.

“We conveyed our concern that our legal people should not be deported, and the deported people should take their salaries and dues from their sponsors,” said Ali Reza, First Secretary at the Embassy of Bangladesh in Kuwait.

Hundreds of Indians held a rare public gathering outside their embassy last week to demand information about people who had been detained or deported.

Critics of the policy say steep cuts in the foreign workforce are not economically feasible, especially since more labourers will be needed to implement a 30 billion dinar ($108 billion) development plan which includes building a new airport terminal, an oil refinery and hospitals.

Some companies prefer to employ foreigners rather than Kuwaitis who, they say, often seek higher pay and cannot be as easily dismissed under law.

But the backlash against foreign workers is not purely economic; they have been blamed in some local media for aggravating social problems.

“Kuwait’s interest calls for washing our hands of the excessive number of expatriates,” an article in the al-Watan newspaper said in April. “Cutting the number of immigrants could help any country as it helps reduce traffic congestion, high consumption of water and electricity, crimes and violations of law.”

In another controversial move, the government is studying a proposal to reserve morning hours for Kuwaitis only at public health clinics. The plan would not affect the private hospitals frequented by wealthier expatriates.

After Kuwait’s main civil rights group said the plan was discriminatory, the Ministry of Health said in a statement: “The proposal is intended to ease the overcrowding at clinics that continues to increase for regular check-ups.” It stressed the new policy would not include emergency care.

Shamlan Alissa, an associate professor at Kuwait University, said it was not right that foreigners could be deported for repeat traffic violations, while the worst that a Kuwaiti might face would be suspension of his driving licence, an impounded car or a fine.

His comments, printed in al-Watan, provoked a public reaction which was “not that pleasant”, he said. “There is a popular hatred towards foreigners because we (Kuwaitis) are only 30 percent” of the population.”

Ghanem al-Najjar, a professor of political science at Kuwait University who has campaigned for migrant workers in the past, said the government should target businessmen and agencies who brought in thousands of labourers for projects and then dismissed some of them, forcing them to look for work elsewhere.

“There are people bringing them in, the residency traders – these are the people who are not touched. That is a major cause of the problem,” he said.

Abdullah, a 35-year-old taxi driver from Pakistan, said he had stopped driving his car into Jleeb because he feared getting stopped, even though he always carried the correct papers.

Some labour agencies in Kuwait have duped foreigners by charging them hundreds of dollars for processing a work permit and then not giving them a position, forcing them to turn to illegal jobs, he said.

Foreigners helped to rebuild Kuwait after the 1990 Iraqi invasion but now feel unwelcome even if they are there legally, he added. “They just used us and now they want to throw us away.”

(Editing by Andrew Torchia)

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By Patrick Werr and Maggie Fick

A governorate worker waters plants at the New Cairo building area on the outskirts of Cairo June 10, 2013. Egypt does not want war with Ethiopia but will keep “all options open”, Egypt’s President Mohamed Mursi said on Monday, turning up the heat in a dispute over a giant dam Addis Ababa is building across the Nile. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

CAIRO, June 11 (Reuters) – A gift of gas to Egypt from tiny Qatar shows just how tough this summer is shaping up to be for the government in Cairo, facing a funding crunch and power cuts as it struggles to contain explosive public discontent.

Daily blackouts have darkened homes and businesses across the country over the past few weeks, aggravated in recent days by an early summer heatwave that has Egyptians cranking up their air conditioners.

Qatar on Monday offered five cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG), worth perhaps $300 million, “as a gift to the Egyptian people during the summer months”.

It is a small gesture from a Gulf ally which has already lent Egypt some $7 billion in the past year but highlights how tough times are for the 84 million Egyptians.

Falling living standards since the 2011 revolt that ended six decades of military rule have led to disillusionment focused on Islamist President Mohamed Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood. Opponents have called for mass protests on June 30, the first anniversary of Mursi’s election.

The country’s budget deficit has widened, the Egyptian pound has weakened, and investors have taken fright, sending the Cairo share index on Monday to its lowest close in more than 10 months.
A vicious circle of unrest and slumping tourism revenues has drained government cash reserves, leaving ministers scrambling for favours abroad, notably to maintain supplies of heavily subsidised fuel and bread that account for a quarter of all government spending.

“We will suffer this summer,” said Mohamed Shoeib, who until recently ran EGAS, the state natural gas concern, and is now a managing director at private equity firm Citadel Capital.

“This will be the hardest and most difficult and darkest summer Egypt has ever seen.”

Adding to worries about energy, the month-long Muslim fast of Ramadan will begin around July 9, a time when tempers can fray as temperatures hit 40 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) and above.

FISCAL CRUNCH

Since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the authorities have run through more than half of Egypt’s foreign reserves, or some $20 billion.

They have also borrowed billions from abroad and delayed payments to oil companies and other suppliers.

Yet partly due to fuel subsidies energy consumption remains high as the state grapples to pay for imports of fuel to generate electricity.

In April, Qatar and Libya extended loans worth $5 billion and Libya said it would provide another $1.2 billion in credit to buy crude oil for Egypt at world prices.

But this will only plug a portion of the country’s energy gap, and still leaves Egypt needing to find fuel on the international market, get it from ports to power plants, keep those plants running at near full capacity and deliver the electricity to consumers across a leaky power grid.

This is proving difficult, with rolling blackouts throughout the country, some for up to 10 hours at a time, which prompted protests in late May, and a heatwave in early June that pushed temperatures in Cairo to 45 Celsius and compounded the problem.

In some places, people blocked roads and railways to demand power – needed in many apartments to pump water.

In the ancient Pharaonic capital of Luxor, local governor Ezzat Saad told Reuters that power cuts blacked out major tourist sites last month, including the 3,400-year-old temple, and he had appealed to Cairo to prevent such incidents.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Successive governments have long avoided of cutting subsidies on fuel which has left Egypt, once a net exporter of energy, in need of imported gas and products including diesel, fuel oil and gasoline.
The political instability of the past two years has also stalled exploration and drilling activities in Egypt’s key offshore and desert areas, reducing production at a time of rising domestic demand.

It has also delayed infrastructure needed to import LNG. Currently Egypt’s two LNG terminals are equipped only for export, meaning the five Qatari cargoes are likely to be diverted to clients previously contracted to buy Egyptian gas.

Egyptian officials expect to be able to receive LNG imports by October, but industry sources say it could take up to 14 months before a floating import facility can be towed into place and connected to the country’s grid.

In the meantime, Egypt has already cut back on gas exports to free up supply for its own power stations, including pipeline deliveries to Jordan.

Its power plants that use fuel oil also face difficulties, including foreign suppliers that have become reluctant to offer credit terms and bottlenecks in distribution.

“Even if you have the money to import all the amounts that you need, the logistics that we have cannot cope with transporting them,” former EGAS head Shoeib said.

“Since the revolution they are struggling to get fuel oil from ports to power plants,” one fuel oil trader in the region said.

Last summer, during the hottest days, electricity consumption peaked at 27,000 megawatts (MW) and seems likely to do so again this year, pressing the power sector to its limits.

“In the summer, in Ramadan … on some days (demand) could rise to 29,000,” Aktham Abou-Elella, undersecretary of state at the Electricity Ministry, told Reuters.

“We can’t operate at more than 86 percent of capacity – 27,000 is our ceiling. Anything above that we for sure need to conserve energy.”

The government is hoping a public awareness campaign can help cut demand this summer.

“It could result in a reduction in consumption of 2,000 MW at least, especially setting air-conditioners at 25 degrees rather than 18 degrees and turning off unnecessary lights,” Abou-Elella said.
Mosques and government buildings will be urged to save electricity, he said, adding that the ministry had agreed with energy-intensive industries to smooth out peak loads.

Some businesses have, however, have suffered shortages of energy.

Mahmoud Arafat, a spokesman for the Nahda cement plant in Qena, 700 km (400 miles) south of Cairo, said it ran out of diesel on May 28, forcing it to lay off 600 workers. Another cement executive said production at major plants around the capital has fallen by half for lack of fuel.

In the Mediterranean port of Damietta, a major furniture-making centre, hundreds of people staged a sit-in outside the local power station last month in protest over repeated blackouts that had disrupted factories for days.

At the Electricity Ministry, Abou-Elella estimated that blackouts might last no more than an hour a day but hoped the government plans to manage demand would work.

“If all these attempts succeed, we should have an acceptable summer,” he said. “We should not have black-outs.”

(Additional reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic and Julia Payne in London; editing by Alastair Macdonald and Jason Neely)

15-25

By Greg McCune

(Reuters) – In a residential neighborhood near the center of a monster tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma last month, two partially damaged houses stand like an island among others flattened by the storm.

The walls and roofs of the buildings in a new housing development called Featherstone Addition are still upright while there is nothing left but a concrete foundation where other homes once stood nearby.

The two homes were not completely spared but are salvageable, according to David Prevatt, a civil engineer who saw them when he surveyed the damage after Moore took a direct hit from an EF5 tornado, the strongest rating.

He is convinced that the two houses survived because they were built stronger than most in Oklahoma and the rest of “tornado alley” – the region stretching from Texas to Iowa that accounts for roughly a fourth of all U.S. tornadoes.

“This notion that we cannot engineer buildings economically to withstand tornado loads is a fallacy,” said Prevatt, who has studied damage from hurricanes and the devastating tornadoes in 2011 in Joplin, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

The cost of damage from tornadoes is soaring in the United States even though National Weather Service historical data shows no significant rise in the number of storms.
The last five years have seen the highest losses from thunderstorm damage in U.S. history, according to an analysis by insurer Munich RE.

Tornadoes were the costliest natural catastrophes in the U.S. in 2011 – the year of Joplin and Tuscaloosa – with an estimated $47 billion in overall economic damage, and insured losses of $26 billion, Munich RE said.

Tropical storms topped the natural disaster list in 2012 because of Hurricane Sandy. But even in a relatively quiet tornado year, economic losses from severe thunderstorms reached $28 billion in 2012 and insured losses $14 billion, Munich RE said.

The Moore, Oklahoma tornado on May 20, and associated storms, could cost up to $5 billion in insured losses, disaster modeling company Eqecat has estimated, making it the second costliest tornado outbreak on record after Tuscaloosa.

Damage costs are rising because of increased population density, even in mostly rural states such as Oklahoma, which has seen substantial urban sprawl in the last decade, said Greg Carbin, Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

Another important reason that has received less attention, is that most homes in tornado alley are not built to withstand even a modest tornado.

The result is that residents of tornado alley, insurance companies and the U.S. government are footing a mounting bill from damage that could be limited with better construction, according to several engineers, meteorologists and consumer advocates interviewed by Reuters.

“We have to stop this cycle of a storm coming along destroying things and we build them back the same,” said Leslie Chapman-Henderson, chief executive of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, a consumer group. “That is the official definition of insanity.”

Oklahoma should follow the example of Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and adopt a tougher building code to reduce damage in future, said Prevatt, Assistant Professor of Civil and Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida.

Most experts cautioned that even a strengthened building code would probably not lead to homes that could survive unscathed from an EF5 tornado. Prevatt believes they can be built but with new housing materials.

UNIQUE LABORATORY

Moore, Oklahoma is a unique laboratory to study construction and tornado damage because it has been hit by four tornadoes in the last 15 years, including a 1999 storm similar to May 20.

Better advance warning systems through the National Weather Service and the news media are credited with what some call a remarkably low 24 fatalities from the May 20 Moore tornado. This compares with 40 in 1999 even though the population of Moore has risen more than a third since, according to U.S. Census data.

Forecasters did not perform as well on May 31 when a second monster storm system bore down on the area and another 20 people were killed. One television meteorologist advised people to get in their cars and flee, putting some at grave risk.

Another improvement in the last 15 years is that more residents of Oklahoma have rebuilt their homes with storm shelters or safe rooms, which also may have saved lives. Seven children were killed on May 20 in a school without a shelter.

Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Dan Watson said that since 1993, FEMA has invested more than $57 million in 11,768 private and public safe rooms in Oklahoma, more structures than in any other state.

The chances of two tornadoes of such magnitude striking in one place such as Moore, let alone four tornadoes in 15 years, are very small, according to Carbin, who studies the odds.

Even at the height of U.S. tornado season on any day in May in central Oklahoma, the chances of a tornado hitting within 25 miles are only about 1 percent, Carbin said.

EF5 tornadoes packing enormous winds of 200 miles per hour and higher, the strongest rating on the Fujita scale used to measure tornadoes, account for less than one-tenth of one percent of all tornadoes, Carbin said.

These slim chances have led many residents of tornado alley to conclude there is no point building to survive tornadoes.

But some 95 percent of all tornadoes are in the lower strength categories to EF2 with winds up to 135 mph, said Carbin.

And the current building code minimum applied in Oklahoma and tornado alley calls for the structure to withstand 90 mph straight line winds for 3 seconds.

“Why should we be surprised if a house collapses if the load is four times more powerful than it was designed to withstand,” said Prevatt.

BUILDING CODES

Tim Marshall, a meteorologist and engineer for Haag Engineering Co in Irving, Texas, said he told the city of Moore about poor construction practices after the huge 1999 tornado.

“We didn’t really change the building codes after the last tornado (1999),” said Elizabeth Jones, community development director of the city of Moore. “For people on a limited income, they look at the probability of being in a tornado. The chances are not that great,” she said.

In lightly regulated Oklahoma, Republican Governor Mary Fallin has ruled out requiring a safe room or shelter in every school as too expensive, despite the recent deaths, prompting criticism from Democrats who say she is ignoring school safety.

Asked in a telephone interview if Oklahoma would toughen its building codes, Fallin said: “That is certainly something we are going to look at this summer. What makes sense. What is doable. What’s not doable.” She said that people have limited budgets and the cost would be a consideration.

Oklahoma has been in touch with Joplin officials to ask what it did after the 2011 tornado there killed 161 people, Fallin said. Steve Cope, building and neighborhoods supervisor for Joplin, said the city made a few upgrades to building codes that did not add much to constructions costs.

Unlike its neighbors Texas and Kansas, Oklahoma has formed a state agency to set building codes. The first statewide rules went into effect on residential construction only two years ago so they have had little time to work. Prior to that, local towns and cities set the codes, and they can still set stronger codes than the state.

Oklahoma opted to use the 2009 version of the basic minimum U.S. building code and not to update when strengthened rules were issued in 2012, according to Billy Pope, chief executive of the Oklahoma Uniform Building Code Commission.

There is no state mechanism to enforce the code, said Pope. Enforcement is left up to local communities and some with populations of 10,000 or less have no inspectors.

“We saw numerous violations of the building codes (in Moore),” said Marshall, a veteran member of the National Weather Service’s rapid response team which went into the town immediately after the May 20 tornado to assess damage.

The basic “minimum” residential building code in the United States is agreed through the International Code Council (ICC), a body that brings together homebuilders, architects, engineers and government officials to update rules every three years.

The process is slow and deliberate, and most of the changes agreed are subtle rather than dramatic, officials said.

STRONGER HOUSES

Building a house to limit tornado damage involves making strong connections from the foundation to the walls to the roof, said Prevatt.

Nails hammered into the wood at a 90 degree angle provide little resistance to the upward suction of a tornado, several construction and engineering experts said.

“We saw that in many places in Moore,” said Randy Shackelford, Research Engineer and Code Specialist for Simpson Strong-Tie Company in McKinney, Texas. “Two nails sticking up where the stud (wall frame) once was.”

The next best connection is what is called a “toenail” in construction jargon, which involves driving the nail into the wood at a 45 degree angle. This provides significantly more resistance than nails driven at a 90 degree angle.

The 2012 national code which Oklahoma decided not to adopt immediately calls for three toenails per connection but Oklahoma’s code allows two nails, which is significantly weaker, Shackelford said.

The two houses Prevatt saw standing in Moore amid the devastation were built with what are called “hurricane ties” or metal straps to bind the roof to the walls, which are stronger than nails, he said. These are required by the robust Florida building code but not in Oklahoma and most of tornado alley.

Connections between walls and the concrete foundations of homes were another area where Moore construction was poor, Prevatt and Marshall said.

The ideal in a storm region would be to use “anchor bolts” – a steel rod embedded in the concrete foundation and bolted to the wall frame.

In Moore, both engineers said they saw numerous cases of nails binding the walls to foundations rather than bolts.

Tanya Brown, a research engineer for the Institute for Business and Home Safety, which studies tornadoes for insurance companies, said she saw many examples in Moore of the house failing because of a collapsed garage door.

The wind blew prefabricated garage doors in, allowing a rush of air into the house and destroying the structure, she said. The garage doors needed braces to avoid collapse, which are not required in Oklahoma.

“They are not commonly used outside hurricane areas,” she said.

The wise thing for tornado alley to do would be to adopt building codes similar to Florida which at least marginally improve the ability of the building to withstand wind, said Carbin, the meteorologist.
The increased building cost would be partially offset by savings from buildings which are not destroyed, he said.

A 2002 University of Florida study found more robust construction to withstand hurricane winds could add up to 10 percent to the selling price of a house.

The National Association of Home Builders did not respond to several requests to comment for this story.

Pope of the Oklahoma building commission said he had just returned from Moore, where he inspected damage along with several other people involved in setting the state’s standards.

“Florida has been in that process for a lot of years. We will probably get there,” he said. “It looks like we are behind and are playing catch-up.”

(Reporting By Greg McCune in Chicago; Additional reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington, Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City, Alice Mannette in Wichita, Kansas and Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Missouri; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Sadia Saifuddin nominated student regent

LOS ANGELES, CA–Sadia Saifuddin has been nominated as UC student regent for the 2014-15 term, the Daily California reported. She is reportedly the first Muslim who will serve in this position.
The student regent is a voting member of the board, attending all meetings and serving a one-year term. The position was created in 1975 to represent the voice of all students of the University of California.

“UC has a lot of difficulties and obstacles, and I think we need new creative solutions,” Saifuddin said. “I come from a legacy of people who care about education and community, and I want the people who come after to have the same opportunities that I’ve had.”

Saifuddin’s nomination awaits confirmation and will be voted on at the regents’ next meeting in July. If approved, Saifuddin will begin her one-year term in July 2014 after serving one year as student regent-designate. Saifuddin would be the 40th student regent.

“Sadia has the leadership experience and the will and drive to be a great student regent,” said current UC Student Regent-Designate Cinthia Flores, who will become student regent this July. “I’m looking forward to working with her in the coming year.”

In the fall, Saifuddin will enter her senior year at UC Berkeley as a social welfare major. During her time at UC Berkeley, Saifuddin has been involved in several campus organizations, including the UC Berkeley Muslim Students Association, the ASUC Senate and the office of Student Regent Jonathan Stein.

New Jersey teens to receive Governor’s Award

PRINCETON, NJ–Three New Jersey teens–Amani Noor Ahmed, Dean Alamleh and Zain Bhayat received the NJ State Governor’s Jefferson Youth Community Service Award in recognition of their work to alleviate hunger, homelessness and poverty.

Amani Ahmed, a resident of Princeton who is a sophomore at Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart conceived the idea for Eleven Points in the fall of 2012. Together with Dean Alamleh, a sophomore at Robbinsville High School and Zain Bhayat , a freshman at South Brunswick High School, Amani co-founded the organization to bring together young Muslim and Jewish people to make a difference in this world. Eleven Points is the sum of the six points on the Star of David and the five points often found on stars in Islamic calligraphy.
Since its inception, Eleven Points has carried out 2 successful projects to benefit the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen and Homefront.

Nisa Khan earns scholarship

BUFFALO GROVE, IL–Nisa Khan, a senior at Buffalo Grove High School, was recently awarded a $500 scholarship from the Buffalo Grove Parent Association.

“Applicants were judged on their academic standing, co-curricular activities, community involvement/work experience, awards/recognitions and personal essays,” according to a press release from the school.

Springfield High students reap a rich harvest of scholarships

Muslim students from across the country have scored excellent results and those from Springfield High School in Springfield, Ohio are no strangers. Several of them have been awarded coveted scholarships for their college and university education.

Arshad Abdulluh, son of Vera Daniels, will attend Clark State Community College. He has accepted a $15,000 scholarship from Clark State Community College.

Nazeer Ahmed, son of Najeeb and Arshiya Ahmed, will attend The Ohio State University. He has accepted an $8,000 scholarship from The Ohio State University.

Farah Chaudhry, daughter of Mohammad and Zubaida Chaudhry, will attend the University of Akron. She has accepted a $38,400 scholarship from the University of Akron and a $1,250 Springfield Foundation scholarship.

Aliya Parvez receives Fairfax Library Foundation scholarship

Aliya Ahmed Parvez is the 2013 Edwin S. Clay, III Masters of Library Science Scholarship winner, receiving an award of $3,500. Parvez was recognized as an outstanding and dedicated applicant by Fairfax Library Foundation’s Scholarship Committee and will be honored in a special ceremony on June 12. In the fall, Parvez will complete her coursework for her Masters of Library and Information Science degree at University of North Texas.

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By Noor H. Salem

On Thursday, June 6th approximately 100 attendees listened to Aisha Rahman, Executive Director of KARAMAH, as well as Dr. Azizah Y. al-Hibri, Founder and Chair of KARAMAH, speak about domestic violence in the Muslim community. Hosted by both ACCESS and KARAMAH, the goal of the educational forum was to help service providers effectively serve Muslim victims of domestic violence.  The forum ran from 9:00am until 12:00pm and was held at Habib’s Cuisine Banquet hall in Dearborn.

It was an interactive session, and the speaker planned for pondering exercises, questions, and responses. She discussed very briefly the basics of Islam so that service providers could have background information about their clients. She mentioned how difficult it is for Muslim women to seek shelters due to Islamophobia and other barriers.

One service provider in the audience shared how one woman she was working with was brought to the US by her husband. Once she arrived here, she found out that he had a girlfriend. The woman did not speak the native language, and it was difficult for her to go back to her family for cultural reasons. She was provided with help and got a job.

Another heart-moving story was one of a woman who was fooled and thought she was legally married. She got married in the UK and came to the US, and her husband did not register their marriage. She struggled in court, and after the judge determined that the marriage was not valid legally, she experienced shame with the birth of her child. After much difficulty and investigation, KARAMAH helped her pass this struggle.

The forum covered cultural barriers that women have to deal with, and also reasons why women stay quiet during abuse. Financial issues are one of the top reasons. Other reasons include shame and fear of not getting married again.

The luncheon was very beneficial, and many service providers look forward to more events and success stories from KARAMAH and ACCESS. 

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By Samia Nakhoul

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese have long viewed the Hezbollah guerrilla army as a state-within-a-state. But having watched it launch a military adventure in Syria and brutality on the streets of Beirut, they feel ever more hostage to the Islamist group’s regional agenda.

Within minutes of a busload of unarmed demonstrators arriving on Sunday at the Iranian embassy in Beirut to protest against Iran and Hezbollah’s military involvement in Syria, Hezbollah enforcers surrounded the building and scattered the crowd with batons and gunfire, leaving one dead.

The small demonstration by an anti-Hezbollah crowd showed that the “Party of God”, armed and financed by Iran, is not prepared to contemplate even the smallest level of threat.

Such visibly frayed nerves in Lebanon’s capital follow the Shi’ite group’s dramatically increased involvement in the two-year-old Syrian civil war, helping troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad retake the border town of Qusair.

Hezbollah’s involvement may have transformed the war into a sectarian contest, pitting Assad and his fellow Alawites, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, against mainly Sunni rebels, including al Qaeda groups fighting under the banner of the Nusra Front.

Western powers and Turkey have also rallied behind the rebels, despite misgivings over Islamist radicals in their ranks, while Russia has armed and diplomatically shielded Assad.

ALEPPO NEXT?

Building on battlefield gains that have swung the momentum towards Assad and Hezbollah, Syrian forces are preparing to retake Aleppo, which could be a decisive point in the war that has killed 80,000 and forced 1.6 million to flee abroad.

The move to a northern front comes as Syria’s war is increasingly infecting its neighbors – Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel – and widening the regional sectarian fault line between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims.

“Syria has become an open battlefront for regional and international powers. It is an open stage for anyone who wants to fight,” said a politician close to the movement.

For the first time since the start of the uprising in March 2011, an Israeli minister suggested on Monday that Assad “might not just survive but even regain territories” from the rebels, an assessment which reflected the difficulties the West faces in predicting Syria’s fate and weighing intervention.

Alarmed by Assad’s advances and Hezbollah’s intervention, Washington might decide later this week on whether to start arming the rebels, a U.S. official said.

What has changed is Hezbollah entering the fray on the side of Assad to fight the rebels, while the Nusra Front has made Syria a magnet for foreign Shi’ite and Sunni fighters.

“Put aside the propaganda that we’re seeing from Hezbollah, the assault that is being prepared around Aleppo is a worry, be it in Washington, Paris or Riyadh,” one Western official said.

“We can have all the diplomatic wrangling in the world, but the most important element is the balance of power on the ground. That balance is changing.”

“You have to weigh the risks,” the official said. “If you arm the rebels, there is a risk (arms) fall into the wrong hands, but if you don’t, then thousands more could get massacred and you’re left with Hezbollah versus Nusra. Which is the worst risk?”

That shift in power makes it less likely that a U.S. and Russian peace conference planned for July to bring the rebels and the government to the table can agree a negotiated political transition to remove Assad from power.

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

Such changes in Western policy on Syria, allied to developments on the battlefield, leave Lebanon hanging by a thread.

In a country still emerging from the ashes of its own 15-year civil war, the sight of Hezbollah men rejoicing over the fall of Qusair or firing at protesters frightens many Lebanese.

Sunday’s killing of the protester in Beirut added to the list of grievances against Hezbollah among Lebanese, who once revered it as a resistance force above domestic politics.

“What we’re seeing is very dangerous: Armed clashes, the weakening of the state, the killing of a protester. It’s low intensity warfare,” said Fawaz Gerges, Professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the London School of Economics.

Lebanese columnist Sarkis Naoum said: “The (Hezbollah) state-within-a state already exists … This shows that if they (Hezbollah) are challenged, they will go to the streets.”

“They (crushed) the protest so it won’t be repeated elsewhere.”

Angry comments dominated social media, showing a bloodied picture of the slain protester, Hashem Salman, a young Shi’ite from a bloc opposed to Hezbollah.

Displayed alongside were pictures of Hezbollah militiamen charging at the crowd with the caption: “The fascist assault and the peaceful protests.”

“Hezbollah has already lost a great deal of ground, not militarily, but if you lose popular support among independents and among the silent majority, you lose. This will haunt them eventually because there was no security threat,” Gerges said.

DEEP FAUTLINES

Hezbollah’s participation in the battle for Qusair is a turning point for the group, set up in Damascus by Iran in 1982 with the aim of fighting Israel after its invasion of Lebanon.

Hezbollah spearheaded the rise of Lebanese Shi’ites from an underclass to the most powerful faction in the country, forced Israel to end its 20-year occupation of south Lebanon, and formed a military front with Syria and Iran against Israel and the United States.

Now many Lebanese see Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s support for Assad against an insurgency dominated by Syria’s Sunni majority as a miscalculation that will drag Lebanon into the Syrian quagmire, exacerbate fighting in Lebanon itself and deepen Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian rifts in the region.

“The internal divide between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims is as deep and as wide as the fault lines between Arabs and Israelis and that statement speaks volumes about the very violent and threatening storms that are brewing in Arab lands,” said Gerges.

No matter how this unfolds, Nasrallah’s prestige in the region is shattered. Long revered as the Arab hero who stood up to Israel, and among his own as the man who elevated Shi’ites to the top of Lebanese politics, he is now being portrayed as the protector of Syrian autocracy and a proxy of Iranian theocracy.

Already on Washington’s terrorism list for attacks against Israeli and U.S. targets, Hezbollah faces new sanctions from Western powers. Arab public opinion has become hostile, seeing the group as an offshoot of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, more responsive to Iranian interests than Lebanese concerns.

Gulf Arab states have now pledged sanctions against Hezbollah members working in the Gulf.

While Hezbollah says it strives to maintain peace inside Lebanon, its intervention in Syria will add to pressures that threaten to fracture the fragile state and limit its ability to contain the growing threat from Sunni extremist groups.

NO RED LINES

The danger of Sunni reprisals could force Hezbollah to take greater control on the ground. Its move into Syria could also trigger another war with Israel, which has three times this year bombed what security sources said were convoys of Iranian missiles transiting Syria towards the Lebanese militia.

Hezbollah has said it will not be dragged into all-out sectarian war in Lebanon, where it is the most powerful militia.

Hezbollah’s adversaries are neither willing nor able to engage it on the streets of Beirut. The danger could come from al Qaeda groups in north and south Lebanon, who may retaliate against Hezbollah with suicide attacks, security sources say.

Politically, the war in Syria and rivalry between pro- and anti-Syrian parties have prevented Lebanon from forming a new government.

“There is a dangerous power vacuum. The military and Lebanese security forces are overstretched in Tripoli, the eastern Bekaa and elsewhere. In such a situation, Hezbollah has emerged as the dominant force as the power broker and the party that has military muscle, with a power base,” Gerges said.

The pro-Hezbollah politician said the party was in no mood to compromise. “Hezbollah has no red line. It will cross any line and take to the streets when it feels it is in danger.” He said politicians could “go to the ends of the earth but they won’t be able to form a government without its approval.”

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Dominic Evans and Giles Elgood)

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By Amina Iqbal

Amina Iqbal

We live in a country where we have the freedom to practice our religious and cultural beliefs, voice our opinions, and have the opportunity to vote. Voting in itself is a huge blessing as it allows us to voice our interests and select our leaders. However, our leaders need to know “us”.  They need to take our opinion into account and understand that we care about the issues at community, state and government levels. They should know that we want to see the education system improved and the roads and infrastructure to be in a better condition. We need jobs, better health care and immigration reforms, just like any other Americans. We would like to know how and where our tax dollars are spent. We are aware of all these issues and discuss them regularly with our friends over chai. How about if we have these same conversations with our representatives over coffee and actually start effecting a change?

Most of our local representatives and senators have meeting/coffee hours multiple times a month in their own districts. They wait to hear from their constituents, from us. I had the opportunity to attend coffee hours and also have met with several state senators and representatives in Lansing. I assure you, after only a couple of such meetings the representatives will know you by name, your words will count for so much more, and a healthy relationship will develop.

State Senator Hoon-Yung Hopgood (8th District) stressed the importance of the politicians “connecting” with the communities. Other elected officials expressed interest in attending non-political community events where they can meet and greet their district members in a casual environment. We are a vibrant community. We usually have a lot to say. Michigan Muslims are diverse and have the ability and desire to contribute. This is one of many avenues that we can utilize to empower our community and build healthy and sustainable relationships with our leaders.

Let’s engage in our communities, communicate with our representatives, congratulate them on fights they fight on our behalf and express disappointment when they don’t. We need to serve on local schools board, volunteer at shelters, attend city council meetings and vote in elections. This is the meaning of civic engagement. We can have chai with our friends, but let’s also have a cup of coffee and make new friends.

15-25

By Karin Friedemann, TMO

Murtaza Haider in an important article, “A License to Rape” published in Dawn newspaper, discusses the British (not Islamic) origins of the Hudood laws of Pakistan, which prosecute women and even minor girls for being raped, while excusing the rapists.

Prof. Asifa Quraishi’s Michigan Journal of International Law article entitled “Her Honor: An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective,” details how the rape provisions of Pakistan’s Hudood Ordinance directly contradict Islamic law regarding sex crimes.

The Quran states: “Those who defame chaste women and do not bring four witnesses (shuhada) should be punished with eighty lashes, and their testimony should not be accepted afterwards, for they are profligates” (24:4).

“The Quranic speech is clear and without confusion. The requirement to produce four witnesses, and not just male witnesses, is required by the Quran to prevent false accusations of fornication against women,” Haider writes.

However, in Pakistan and in some other Muslim countries that have experienced the legacy of British rule, a woman is considered guilty UNLESS she can provide four male witnesses to prove that she is innocent!

This has given a lot of ammunition to Western and feminist critics of Islam and Muslims, because of the obvious injustice – especially regarding high rates of incest involving children within extended families. In the Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Pakistan in 2010, Dr. Iram Manzoor wrote that most rape victims were aged between 10 and 19 years old.

“A series of events in the past few weeks have again highlighted the injustices being committed against women in the name of Islam in Pakistan,” writes Haider. “Recently, the three accused of raping an 18-year old woman at Jinnah’s Mausoleum were set free by a court in Karachi. The court refused to entertain the DNA evidence, which reportedly proved the guilt of the accused, and gave the accused the benefit of the doubt because the victim could not produce four eyewitnesses to the rape. Weeks later, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) decreed that the DNA evidence in the absence of four righteous men as witnesses to rape is not sufficient for conviction under Islamic law.”

“By turning our collective backs on science, logic, and ijtihad, we have brought ourselves to a state where discrimination against women and the disenfranchised is being committed in the name of Islam.” The CII ruling “contradicts the Islamic tradition of using scientific procedure to determine the truth or falsehood of rape accusations,” concludes Haider.

Anwar Mahmud Dabur in al-Qara’in wa Dawruha fi al-fiqh al-Jina’i al-Islami narrates the story of a woman who falsely accused another man of rape. She spread egg white on herself and her clothes and brought it as evidence to Caliph Umar ibn Khattab. The Caliph consulted another woman who confirmed the woman’s clothing bore semen stains. The Caliph consulted Ali (subsequently the fourth Caliph), who immersed the stained cloth in boiling water that turned the stains into white solid, which smelled and looked like egg.

In another case, “The Prophet himself (saw) is reported to have consulted an expert on face recognition to settle a paternity dispute (Sunan al-Dar Qutni).

Modern feminist theory considers rape to be a violent crime to be understood within the context of the power relationship between the rapist and the victim. A woman who is pressured into sex by an employer, or a prisoner who consents to sex with a prison guard, is considered blameless. The Quran similarly warns against raping slave women, and absolves the raped woman of sin.

“… And do not, in order to gain some of the fleeting pleasures of this worldly life, coerce your slave women into whoredom if they are desirous of marriage, and if anyone should coerce them, then, verily, after they have been compelled (to submit in their helplessness), God will be much forgiving, a dispenser of grace (to them)” (24:33).

During the time of the Prophet (saw), punishment was inflicted on the rapist on the solitary testimony of the victim. Wa’il ibn Hujr reports of an incident when a woman was raped. Later, when some people came by, she identified and accused the man of raping her. They seized him and brought him to Allah’s messenger, who said to the woman, “Go away, for Allah has forgiven you,” but of the man who had raped her, he said, “Stone him to death.” (Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud).

During the time when Umar (raa) was the Khalifah, a woman accused his son Abu Shahmah of raping her; she brought the infant borne of this incident with her to the mosque and publicly spoke about what had happened. Umar (raa) asked his son who acknowledged committing the crime and was duly punished right there and then. There was no punishment given to the woman. (Rauf)

Uzma Mazhar writes in “Rape & Incest: Islamic Perspective,” that traditional Islamic legal scholars interpret rape as a crime in the category of hiraba (violent crime). Rape and incest are not considered a subcategory of zina (fornication). Al-Dasuqi held that if a person forced a woman to have sex, his actions would be deemed as committing hiraba. Ibn ‘Arabi held that “hiraba with the private parts” is much worse than hiraba involving the taking of money, since anyone would rather be subjected to the latter than the former.

“Each school of Islamic law has held that where a woman is harmed through sexual intercourse (some include marital intercourse), she is entitled to financial compensation for the harm. Further, where this intercourse was without the consent of the woman, the perpetrator must pay the woman both the basic compensation for the harm, as well as an additional amount based on the ‘diyya’ (financial compensation for murder, akin to a wrongful death payment),” concludes Mazhar.

Holding rapists accountable for their crimes is a good start, but in the long run we must also look at the social conditions that lead to rape. In the west, free mixing of men and women is often viewed by Muslims as leading to fornication (consensual sex). However, the extreme cultural segregation of men and women in some Muslim countries can also be viewed as possibly leading to rape and incest, in the same way that priestly celibacy leads to pedophelia and homosexual perversions within the Catholic church.

Respectful and appropriate interaction rather than total avoidance of females should probably be encouraged before secret perversions develop, so that boys and men will more likely respect girls and women as equally valuable human beings.

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