All posts tagged: rescue

Inside Ben Affleck’s rescue mission to reach ex Jennifer Garner and their three children

Inside Ben Affleck’s rescue mission to reach ex Jennifer Garner and their three children

Ben Affleck came to the rescue of his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, and their three children on Tuesday after the encroaching wildfires in Los Angeles sparked safety concerns for residents. The Batman actor was seen rushing to Jennifer’s home from his own Pacific Palisades house close by as evacuation orders came through for those living in the path of the wildfire.  The former couple married in 2005 and sadly split in 2018; they share kids Violet, 19, Fin, 16, and Samuel, 12. Recommended videoYou may also likeWATCH: Jennifer Lopez makes her first major appearance since Ben Affleck divorce filing Ben donned a green hooded jacket as he drove to their home to take the children away from the disaster. Jennifer has been staying in a rental home close to Ben’s abode while her Brentwood farmhouse is being renovated.  After ensuring his children were safe, the next day Ben checked on neighbours around his Brentwood suburb, ensuring they were okay.  © BACKGRIDBen was seen rushing to Jennifer’s house to rescue his three children The Los Angeles City Fire …

Trump to Russia’s Rescue – The Atlantic

Trump to Russia’s Rescue – The Atlantic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Dictatorships seem stable and almost invulnerable, until the day they fall. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime crumbled in days in the face of an offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a group that the United States considers a terrorist organization. But the Syrian civil war is, for now, mostly over. Hundreds of thousands are dead. I wrote more than a decade ago in favor of Western intervention in Syria, back when the butcher’s bill was still in the tens of thousands, and finally gave up when Assad repeatedly used chemical weapons and got away with it. I predicted at the time that President Barack Obama’s decision against military action would undermine America’s position in the Middle East, embolden Iran, and give Russia its first major outpost in the region. Some of my worst fears, sadly, came true, …

How elite rescue swimmers stay calm in life-or-death situations

How elite rescue swimmers stay calm in life-or-death situations

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. In 1986, the USS Lexington aircraft carrier was operating at night in the Gulf of Mexico when it received a distress call from a U.S. Coast Guard dispatcher. A boat had capsized and up to 20 people were in the water, suggested an initial report.  Aviation Rescue Swimmers Bill Gibson and Rick Williamson, plus their aircrew, launched from the USS Lexington in an SH-3D Sea King helicopter toward the area of interest. The crew rigged the cabin for rescue.  Shortly after arriving on the scene and conducting a box search pattern, the left-seat pilot spotted a strobe light flashing a mile in the distance. The pilots approached a life raft with four souls on board, an unexpected sight given the initial intel. The pilots brought the helicopter to a 40-foot hover and lowered Gibson and Williamson into the pitch-black, high-sea state. The pilots then backed off the aircraft to provide …

James Gunn reveals ‘sweet’ link between his rescue dog and Superman’s pet Krypto in new film

James Gunn reveals ‘sweet’ link between his rescue dog and Superman’s pet Krypto in new film

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Director James Gunn has revealed the first look at Krypto the Superdog, who will feature in the upcoming Superman film, set for release in 2025. The new film, which is simply called Superman will star David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, who has admitted that he “didn’t feel great” after bulking up for the role. It was confirmed by DC Comics writer Mark Waid in September that Krypto would be appearing in the new film but few could have guessed that the character would be based on Gunn’s own rescue dog, Ozu. On X/Twitter, Gunn shared the first image of Krypto in the film, which sees the dog sitting on the Moon with Superman as they gaze down at the Earth, which is a homage to a panel from the acclaimed comic book All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison. Expanding on the …

Elon Musk to the Rescue

Elon Musk to the Rescue

When the astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams launched to the International Space Station on June 5, they flew on a Boeing spacecraft and wore the company’s bright-blue spacesuits. On the way home, eight months after their scheduled return, they will likely ride in a SpaceX vehicle, dressed in sleek white suits designed with the aesthetic sensibilities of that company’s CEO and chief engineer in mind. Elon Musk to the rescue. The two NASA astronauts were supposed to come home after just eight days. Instead, they have been stuck for 81 days on the ISS in a weightless limbo. They were—and still are—fine; the station has plenty of supplies, and work to keep them busy. The question keeping them there has been whether Starliner, the Boeing spacecraft that brought them, was capable of bringing them back. This mission was a test-drive, the first time Starliner had carried people to space, and its thrusters malfunctioned en route to the station. Weeks of tests have not made clear whether the spacecraft can return without the …

Secular Rescue: Still Fighting to Save Lives in Afghanistan

Secular Rescue: Still Fighting to Save Lives in Afghanistan

[ Adobe Stock | Karl Allen Lugmayer ] Matthew Cravatta The Center for Inquiry (CFI) was one of the first secular organizations to come to the aid of vulnerable Afghans, both ex-Muslims and progressive Muslims, on humanitarian grounds. On September 10, 2021, CFI announced its intention to save as many lives as possible by establishing the Afghan Rescue Fund. Since then, most nations have quietly backed away from earlier commitments. A phenomenon I have previously labeled “empathy fatigue” has set in; borders started to close to Afghan refugees, and the political will began to evaporate as other international crises took center stage. However, Secular Rescue never stopped working to save endangered Afghans, even when the Afghan Rescue Fund officially ceased operations on December 31, 2022. Even now, threatened Afghans constitute most of all Secular Rescue cases. Legal immigration processes are enormously time-consuming and rife with bureaucratic sloth. While they wait for slow-to-process visas to safer nations—mostly in cramped safehouses in Pakistan or moving from house to house in Afghanistan—nearly all our cases need some financial …

Leaving the Oppression | Secular Rescue

Leaving the Oppression | Secular Rescue

[ Adobe Stock | Petr ] Matt Cravatta Jana (an alias) is a twenty-eight-year-old Iraqi ex-Muslim. Like nearly every girl in Iraq, Jana was raised as a Muslim, specifically a Shia. She was forced to adhere to its strictures, teachings, and basic rules—as well as its unwritten ones. Jana followed these beliefs and rules but eventually found her faith waning. She sought to understand what she was taught to believe without question. Muslim children and teens who question their religion receive swift punishment. Islam and the Qur’an are not to be questioned. Jana suffered unprintable horrors as a child, including sexual abuse and regular vicious assaults. As Jana grew up and became a young woman, she continued to be on the receiving end of various beatings from family members. She was even stabbed by her brother. She boldly pushed forward and began to express her doubts. She began to question the Qur’an. “Some things were just not reasonable,” she told Secular Rescue. “I kept telling myself that I can’t have doubts.”  Gender-based inequalities associated with …

‘Like the horrors of judgment day’: the cost to Palestinians of Israel’s hostage rescue | Israel-Gaza war

‘Like the horrors of judgment day’: the cost to Palestinians of Israel’s hostage rescue | Israel-Gaza war

The market in Nuseirat was busy on Saturday morning. Among the crowds were Asia El-Nemer, looking for a pharmacy that still had stock of her sister’s medication, and Ansam Haroun, hoping to find new clothes to lift her daughters’ spirits on the forthcoming Eid al-Adha holiday. This part of central Gaza had emptied at the start of the year when Israeli troops first moved through, destroying Haroun’s house in an airstrike, but filled up again from May as more than a million people fled north to escape another operation in Rafah. “The Nuseirat market is always crowded, but now more than usual because of the many displaced people,” said Haroun, 29, who is now staying with an uncle. She was looking at outfits for the girls when the first Israeli airstrikes hit, and almost without thinking raced out of the door to go to them. Outside, she found a scene “like the horrors of judgment day”, as panicked crowds tried to escape the coming onslaught. Helicopters and quadcopter drones would soon join the assault that …

U.S. intelligence aided Israeli hostage rescue in Gaza

U.S. intelligence aided Israeli hostage rescue in Gaza

The United States provided some intelligence that aided in Saturday’s rescue of four Israeli hostages, according to several people familiar with the matter. An American team based in Israel furnished the information, these people said, though it appeared to be secondary to intelligence gathered by the Israelis ahead of the operation. One person said the U.S. material included overhead imagery. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the operation’s sensitivity. That team, composed of special operations and intelligence personnel working out of the embassy in Jerusalem, has been in Israel since the war began in October. Since then, it has shared with Israeli counterparts information about hostages’ potential location gleaned from U.S. drone surveillance over Gaza, communications intercepts and other sources, said the people familiar with the matter. “The United States is supporting all efforts to secure the release of hostages still held by Hamas, including American citizens,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement. He noted this work includes ongoing negotiations and “other means.” Axios and the New York Times …

The Arduous Journey: How Secular Rescue Saved Me from Tyranny

The Arduous Journey: How Secular Rescue Saved Me from Tyranny

[ Adobe Stock | Jeanette Teare ] Pasoon The following article was written by Pasoon (an alias), an ex-Muslim Afghan rights activist, journalist, and former political programs presenter on TV and radio in Kabul. His brother was murdered by the Taliban just a few days after Pasoon contacted Secular Rescue to ask for help. The piece has been edited for clarity and space. In 1995, the year of my birth, Kabul was the main battlefield in Afghanistan’s civil war. When the Taliban came to power, my family had abandoned urban life; we lived in an old house in a remote village. I would go to the nearby school in the morning and then to the mosque in the afternoon to study Islam. The mosque’s mullah always clutched a stick, and anyone who neglected his lessons would be severely beaten, which I will never forget. I soon became an excellent student of Arabic books, spending most of my time at the mosque. I was a fiercely religious child. If someone at home was listening to music, …