Ghana Ambassador Lucheon. Sister Cities. Thursday, April 12, 2018. Washington, D.C.

Diplomatic Luncheon Series: Ambassador of Ghana to U.S.

Join us at the City Club of Washington for our Diplomatic luncheon on Thursday, April 12. This month's speaker, His Excellency Dr. Barfuor Adjei-Barwuah, Ambassador of the Republic of Ghana to the United States, will speak about his work and the importance of citizen diplomacy while attendees enjoy lunch. 

Please email annalise.parks@clubcorps.com or call 202-347-0818 to RSVP. 

Download the informational flyer.

Deadline May 29, 2018. $23.7Million Grants for Serious Mental Illness

SAMHSA Is Accepting Applications for up to $23.7 Million in Grants To Treat Serious Mental Illness

Application Due Date: Tuesday, May 29, 2018

SAMHSA is accepting applications for its Assertive Community Treatment grants and expects to award up to seven grants, of up to $678,000 per year, for up to 5 years. The grants will be used to improve behavioral health outcomes by reducing the rates of hospitalization and death for people with a serious mental illness (SMI). SAMHSA expects that the program will also reduce the rates of substance use, homelessness and involvement with the criminal justice system among people with SMI.

Learn More About This Grant

Trauma and Mental Health. Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing of Children, Adolescents and Youth: Part 1

The state of emergency in the Black Community in the U.S. is no different than other communities torn by civil strife, war, and violence.

U.S. members consider taking this and other courses to deal with the trauma of disasters, violence, and other disruptive issues in our communities.

Our mental health has a priority, just as a physical health.

CDS.  CEO  BEMA International

Protection   Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing of Children, Adolescents and Youth: Part 1 Understand the potential impact an emergency can have on children’s psychosocial wellbeing and learn the key approaches to strengthen the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of children and young people in humanitarian response programmes. This course is Part I of a 2-part series. Both courses are available in English and Arabic.

Start Course أدخل إلى النسخة العربيّة

SHARE THIS COURSE WITH YOUR FRIENDS: Post Tweet Share

UN Academy. Addressing 21st Century Slavery. in the Workplace and Supply Chain.

Either condemn it openly, or I consider if not condemned it is being practiced or condoned covertly.

If culturally acceptable.  Let's bring it out in the open.  So I and others know who we shall, and shall not conduct business with.

Charles D. Sharp.  CEO.  BEMA International

A New Learning Experience from the UN Global Compact Do you struggle with ensuring decent work and sustainability in your supply chains? What does the “future of work” look like for your company? Join the next UN Global Compact Academy Session to learn strategies and best practices from the experts: Guy Ryder, Director-General, ILO and Lila Karbassi, Chief of Programmes, UN Global Compact. The online session can be accessed from anywhere in the world on Tuesday, 10 April at 3:00 p.m. EDTa/8:00 p.m. GMT/9:00 p.m. CET. During this session you will learn: ·        The importance of adhering to fundamental principles and rights at work ·        What the decent work agenda is, how it relates to the Global Goals and the role of your company ·        Examples of key actions to eliminate modern slavery in your supply chain ·        Practical recommendations for how your company can help shape the Future of Work → Click here to share the next UN Global Compact Academy session on Twitter! The UN Global Compact Academy “Influencer Series" is designed to provide businesses with intimate knowledge access to some of the most prominent UN experts and business leaders shaping the sustainability agenda. Four Reasons to Register for Academy Sessions Today

1. Gain the skills needed to meet your sustainability objectives

2. Access cutting-edge tools & resources

3. Learn from and interact with world-class experts		4. Join a learning environment designed for a global workforce
Missed the first UN Global Compact Academy Session? Not to worry! Watch the recap here and share the video with your network on Twitter.

Make the Change. "Where You See Wrong or Inequality or Injustice SPEAK OUT" Thurgood Marshall

BUSINESS AS USUAL,....

.... or make the CHANGE NOW for the Next Generation.

If your question is edited from any meeting, conference, symposium, social media, or event. Continue to speak out.

Spread the word.

Black Emergency Managers Association International.

When you purposely eliminate voices from the conversations and discussions that directly affect them politically within their community, you are an active participant in modern-day suppression and in violation of their civil rights.

FREE, NO COST (except travel & lodging) Training Offered . EPA Environmental. State, County, City, Township, and Federal Employees.

Keep in mind that all incidents and disasters are local until federal response or other coordinating entity arrives on scene. Have someone familiar in your local office at the State, County, City, township familiar with environmental Superfund process for the protection of your community.  Don’t wait until the event occurs, get ahead of the curve. BEMA International

** Attendees must be Federal, Tribal, State or Local agency employees. 

   

     Contractors, private industry and academia are not permitted to attend

    either course.  Travel/lodging costs are the responsibility of the student or

    student’s employer. **

Oil Response Training - Combined Backwater and Fast Water Hosted by Environmental Response Training Program (ERTP) ERT – OSRTI Portsmouth, NH April 16, 2018 - April 19, 2018 Registration:  https://trainex.org/offeringslist.cfm?courseid=360 Password:  cosmo1 This course is custom designed to meet requests of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Federal On-Scene-Coordinators (FOSCs) in their regions. The course may be from 2 days to 5 days in length dependent on request and agenda development. The course may contain any of the course content and field work found in the Slow, Backwater Practical Course or Fast Water Practical Courses listed in their course descriptions. Dependent upon selection of course work participants will deploy boom on lakes or rivers; establish oil recovery sites; provide protection to sensitive areas and shoreline with boom; operate boats on lakes or rivers; install dikes, dams and filter fences on streams; and install French drains and cut-off walls. Instructional methods will include classroom instruction and field work.

Introduction to Risk Assessment Guidance With Expanded Eco-Risk Hosted by Environmental Response Training Program (ERTP) ERT – OSRTI Augusta, ME  May 15, 2018 - May 18, 2018  Registration:  https://trainex.org/classdetails.cfm?courseid=1561&classid=7759 This 3.5-day course provides participants with the fundamentals of risk assessment as applied to the Superfund cleanup process. This course is designed to present an introduction to the Superfund risk assessment process to Project Managers, On-Scene Coordinators, Risk Assessment Reviewers, and potentially new Risk Assessors working at hazardous waste sites or treatment, storage, and disposal facilities. The course assumes little experience with toxicology and risk assessment or knowledge regarding Superfund risk assessment guidance.

Waste Treatment, Transportation, and Disposal Hosted by U.S. EPA Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation Boston, MA June 6, 2018 - June 7, 2018 Registration:  https://trainex.org/classdetails.cfm?courseid=46&classid=7763 Waste Treatment, Transportation and Disposal, a 2-day advanced training course, focuses on specific technical and regulatory issues that On Scene Coordinators (OSC) and Remedial Project Managers (RPM) must address when treating, transporting and disposing of waste.

Massive Oil Fields in Texas Are Heaving, Sinking, And Opening Up Like Mouths

Massive Oil Fields in Texas Are Heaving, Sinking, And Opening Up Like Mouths
https://www.sciencealert.com/massive-oil-fields-in-texas-ar…

Massive Oil Fields in Texas Are Heaving, Sinking, And Opening Up Like Mouths www.sciencealert.com It began with sinkholes. Two of them, gaping mouths to nowhere opening up as if to swallow the town of Wink, Texas. As they expanded, there were fears they might collide, morphing into one giant void.

4,000 square miles of geohazard.
PETER DOCKRILL
22 MAR 2018

It began with sinkholes. Two of them, gaping mouths to nowhere opening up as if to swallow the town of Wink, Texas. As they expanded, there were fears they might collide, morphing into one giant void.

They first emerged in 1980, and things haven't gotten better since. Now, an unprecedented study reveals Wink and its vast sinkholes are just a tiny part of a much bigger problem – a vast stretch of historical oil fields that are heaving and sinking, covering an area almost the size of Connecticut.

"The ground movement we're seeing is not normal," explains geophysicist Zhong Lu from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

"The ground doesn't typically do this without some cause."

235 texas oil wink geohazard 3Safety sign in Wink (Nicolas Henderson/Flickr)

Lu was part of a team who in 2016 used satellite data to reveal that the two Wink sinkholes weren't frozen in place, but could be about to expand in response to subsidence detected in and around the town.

Now, the researchers have used the same techniques, zoomed out, to find that an area encompassing some 10,360 square kilometres (4,000 square miles) – covering four counties and six towns – is in fact sinking and uplifting, in parts by as much as 1 metre (40 inches).

"These hazards represent a danger to residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as potential pollution of ground water," Lu says.

"Proactive, continuous detailed monitoring from space is critical to secure the safety of people and property."

The satellite data the team used was sourced overhead in between November 2014 and April 2017, and coupled with oil-well production data provided by the Railroad Commission of Texas, the researchers conclude this epic instability is the result of decades of oil extraction in the area, and its knock-on effects on rocks below the surface of the earth.

235 texas oil wink geohazard 3Ground deformation (Zhong Lu and Jin-Woo Kim/SMU)

Nobody's sure quite how the heaving and sinking will develop from here, but the bad news is the phenomenon might not be contained to the already vast expanse of oil fields the researchers have so far looked – the extent of the damage could ultimately be way bigger.

"Our analysis looked at just this 4,000-square-mile area," says one of the team, geodetic scientist Jin-Woo Kim.

"We're fairly certain that when we look further, and we are, that we'll find there's ground movement even beyond that. This region of Texas has been punctured like a pin cushion with oil wells and injection wells since the 1940s and our findings associate that activity with ground movement."

The subsidence issues – which are thought to be tied to seismic activity that's previously been linked to oil and gas operations in Texas – will be monitored ongoing by the team, who want to know how bad the problem is, and how far it reaches.

"We have seen a surge of seismic activity around [the town of] Pecos in the last five to six years. Before 2012, earthquakes had not been recorded there," Kim says.

"Although earthquakes and surface subsidence could be coincidence, we cannot exclude the possibility that these earthquakes were induced by hydrocarbon production activities."

There's a lot more research to be done before we understand the full extent of this heaving landscape, but it sure looks like a legacy of plunder spanning most of a century has left the ground under Texas disturbed, even famished, and the time has come where it wants something back in return.

The findings are reported in Scientific Reports.

National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association 

1029 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 601

Washington, DC 20005

Office: (202) 628-8833

Fax No.: (202) 393-1816

Email: latinofarmers@live.com 

Twitter: @NLFRTA

Website: www.NLFRTA.org