Metropolitan Museum returns stolen artworks to Thailand.

The Metropolitan Museum in New York has returned two 11th century bronze statues to Thailand after learning that they had been smuggled out of the country illegally in the 1970s. The statues, a 129cm high statue of the God Shiva known as the 'Golden Boy' and a 43 cm high statue of a kneeling woman, were handed over in a ceremony in Bangkok on Tuesday 21 May 2024, following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Metropolitan Museum and the Kingdom of Thailand in April.

The two statues returned to the Kingdom of Thailand by the Metropolitan Museum. Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Thailand/Bangkok Post.

The statues are believed to have been smuggled out of the country in 1975 by Douglas Latchford, a British-born, Bangkok-based antiquities dealer who had been under investigation by the United States Department of Homeland Security Investigations from 2019 until the time of his death in August 2020. The items came into the possession of the Metropolitan Museum in 1998, and were on display until 2023, when the museum became aware of their provenance, and contacted the Thai authorities. Latchford's records showed that the Golden Boy statue was excavated in the village of Ban Yang Pongsadao in Buri Ram province, though the origin of the Kneeling Woman is unclear.

The two artworks will be displayed in the National Museum in Bangkok, alongside a larger bronze statue that shows similarities in execution to the Golden Boy, This statue, thought to be of King Surayavaraman I, was excavated at Prasat Sa Kamphaeng Yai in Sri Sa Ket Province, 120 km to the east of the site where the Golden Boy statue was unearthed. This statue has been on display in the Phimai National Museum in Nakhon Ratchasima until now. All three items will later be moved to the Phra Nakhon National Museum.

The Metropolitan Museum has also returned fourteen objects associated with Douglas Latchford to Cambodia, and the Government of Thailand has approved the return of another 20 artefacts from its museums to the same country. These were part of a collection of 43 items smuggled into Thailand via Singapore in 2000. The other 23 items were returned between 2009 and 2015.

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Rail lines in Westchester County, New York, blocked by landslide.

Rail services on the Hudson Line between Tarrytown and Croton-Harmon in Westchester County, New York, were disrupted for more than a day following a landslide which covered the tracks on Saturday 21 October 2023. The landslide occurred after a period of heavy rainfall in the area. Landslides are a common problem after severe weather events, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall.

A landslide at Scarborough in Westchester County, New York covering part of the Hudson Line between Tarrytown and Croton-Harmon on Saturday 21 October 2023. Westchester County Police Department.

Landslide expert Dave Petley of the University of Hull has examined images of the landslide, and in his Landslide Blog written that the landslide appears to have been caused by the failure of a retaining wall above the track, parts of which can be seen lying on the track following the landslide. This wall appears to have been used to create a flat garden area upon the hill above the track, with a filling behind is made up of soil and debris from the levelling of the ground behind, and appears to have failed when this soil became waterlogged, either due to poor planning or poor maintenance.

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More than fifty dead as Hurricane Ida batters the American east coast.

More than fifty people have now died in the US in incidents linked to Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday 29 August 2021. The majority of the deaths occurred in northeastern states, which historically have not suffered many such events and were poorly prepared, with the highest number of deaths was recorded in New Jersey, where at least 23 people have died, mostly of drowning after becoming trapped in cars or flooded apartments, although the state was hit by at least one tornado generated by the hurricane, which is reported to have destroyed its largest dairy farm. 

 

Flooding in Manville, New Jersey, on Thursday 2 September 2021. Andrew Mills/NJ Advance Media.

At least fourteen people, including a two year old boy, have lost their lives in New York City, with eleven victims confirmed to have drowned after becoming trapped in flooded basements. The city was forced to temporarily close its streets to non-emergency vehicles to enable rescue work to be carried out, the subway network was closed due to flooding, and thousands of homes were left without power. 80 mm of rain fell in an hour in Central Park, surpassing a previous record of 49 mm, set only a month ago by another tropical storm that hit the city.

 

Flooding in New York linked to Hurricane Ida. AP.

Nine people are reported to have died in storm-related events in Louisiana, including at least one person who drowned, and three who died of carbon monoxide poisoning. However, the fact that the death toll was not much higher has been hailed as a vindication of the billions of dollars that have been invested in the leve system protecting the city of New Orleans following the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Katrina sixteen years ago. The city, which was directly in the path of the storm, suffered wind damage as it was battered by 240 km per hour winds, but only a limited amount of flooding. A plan to evacuate large parts of New Orleans in the event of it being hit by another major hurricane was not put into place because of the rapidity with which the storm formed, developing over the Caribbean Sea only four days before making landfall as the fifth largest storm ever to hit the US coast.

 

Buildings demolished by high winds as Hurricane Ida swept over New Orleans. Brandon Bell/Getty Images.

Elsewhere, at least five people have died in Pennsylvania, two each in Mississippi and Alabama, and one death each in Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia. Many officials in the US, including President Joe Biden, have linked the storm directly to global warming, noting that the average storm hitting the US today does seven times as much damage as in the 1970s, that 'hundred year' storms now happen several times a decade, and that states formerly to the north of the hurricane zone are now regularly hit by these storms.

 

Floodwaters in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, associated with Hurricane Ida. Pittsburgh Post Gazette/AP.

Tropical storms, known as hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific, are caused by solar energy heating the air above the oceans, which causes the air to rise leading to an inrush of air. If this happens over a large enough area the inrushing air will start to circulate, as the rotation of the Earth causes the winds closer to the equator to move eastwards compared to those further away (the Coriolis Effect). This leads to tropical storms rotating clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere. These storms tend to grow in strength as they move across the ocean and lose it as they pass over land (this is not completely true: many tropical storms peter out without reaching land due to wider atmospheric patterns), since the land tends to absorb solar energy while the sea reflects it.

 

The formation of a tropical cyclone. Natural Disaster Management.

Despite the obvious danger of winds of this speed, which can physically blow people, and other large objects, away as well as damaging buildings and uprooting trees, the real danger from these storms comes from the flooding they bring. Each drop millibar drop in air-pressure leads to an approximate 1 cm rise in sea level, with big tropical storms capable of causing a storm surge of several meters. This is always accompanied by heavy rainfall, since warm air over the ocean leads to evaporation of sea water, which is then carried with the storm. These combined often lead to catastrophic flooding in areas hit by tropical storms.

 

The formation and impact of a storm surge. eSchoolToday.

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United States returns seized archaeological artefacts to Afghanistan.

The United States government has formerly handed over a collection of ancient artefacts seized from a New York art dealer to the government of Afghanistan. The collection comprises 33 artefacts, including masks, sculptures, and other items from the Greek, Hindu, Buddhist, and Early Islamic periods, were handed over by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations at a ceremony in New York on Monday 19 April 2021, and will be briefly on display at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington DC, before being returned to the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul.

 

Roya Rahmani, Afghanistan's ambassador to the US, with looted and stolen Afghan religious relics and antiquities. Andrew Harnik/AP.

Afghanistan lies on a hub of ancient trade routes connecting Europe and the Middle East to Central and South Asia. As such it has a long archaeological record, with art and artefacts left behind by many civilisations that have passed through the region over the past 6000 years, and around 2600 known archaeological sites within the country. From the 1980s onwards the Taliban, a deeply conservative Islamic organisation which took the view that all images of Human subjects and religious art from non-Islanic sources were wrong, waged a war against first the Soviet Union, which entered the country in 1978 following a coup by the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which overthrew the democratic government of Mohammed Daoud Khan, and then the United States and their NATO allies, who invaded the country in 2001 following the terrorist attacks carried out in the US by al-Qaeda, and organisation which had been allowed to operate within Afghanistan by a Taliban government.

During this time many archaeological sites were destroyed or looted, including the National Museum and the famous Giant Buddhas of Bamiyan Province, which were dynamited in March 2001. However, any of the artifacts supposedly destroyed on the orders of Taliban leaders were in fact smuggled out of the country, entering an international trade in looted art and archaeological artefacts. 

In October 2011 New York-based art dealer Subhash Kapoor was arrested at Frankfurt International Airport and charged with smuggling artefacts from a number of South Asian countries; he was subsequently extradited to India where he remains in prison. Subsequent raids on his properties in New York recovered artefacts with a total estimated value in excess of US$100 million, which the US authorities are in the process of returning to their original owners, having previously returned material to Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

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Fireball Meteor over New York State.

The American Meteor Society has received reports of a bright fireball meteor being seen over  upstate New York, slighlt after 6.05 pm local time (slightly after 11.05 GMT) on Monday 4 January 2021 . The meteor passed from east to west, disappearing somewhere to the south of Richmondville. A fireball is defined as a meteor (shooting star) brighter than the planet Venus. These are typically caused by pieces of rock burning up in the atmosphere, but may be the result of man-made space-junk burning up on re-entry.

 

Heat map of the northearn United States and neighbouring areas of Canada showing areas where sightings of the meteor were reported (warmer colours indicate more sightings), and the apparent path of the object (blue arrow). American Meteor Society. 

Objects of this size probably enter the Earth's atmosphere several times a year, though unless they do so over populated areas they are unlikely to be noticed. They are officially described as fireballs if they produce a light brighter than the planet Venus. The brightness of a meteor is caused by friction with the Earth's atmosphere, which is typically far greater than that caused by simple falling, due to the initial trajectory of the object. Such objects typically eventually explode in an airburst called by the friction, causing them to vanish as an luminous object. However this is not the end of the story as such explosions result in the production of a number of smaller objects, which fall to the ground under the influence of gravity (which does not cause the luminescence associated with friction-induced heating).

 

These 'dark objects' do not continue along the path of the original bolide, but neither do they fall directly to the ground, but rather follow a course determined by the atmospheric currents (winds) through which the objects pass. Scientists are able to calculate potential trajectories for hypothetical dark objects derived from meteors using data from weather monitoring services.

 

Witness reports can help astronomers to understand these events. If you witness a fireball-type meteor over the US you can report it to the American Meteor Society here. 

 

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Fireball over the New York/Quebec border area.

The American Meteor Society has received reports of a bright fireball meteor being seen over  the New York/Ontario border area, at about 7.30 pm local time on Monday 7 December 2020 (slightly after 0.30 am on Tuesday 8 December GMT). The meteor passed from southeast to northwest, disappearing somewhere near Frankville. A fireball is defined as a meteor (shooting star) brighter than the planet Venus. These are typically caused by pieces of rock burning up in the atmosphere, but may be the result of man-made space-junk burning up on re-entry.

 

Fireball over Ontario, seen from Pickering. Todd M/American Meteor Society.

Objects of this size probably enter the Earth's atmosphere several times a year, though unless they do so over populated areas they are unlikely to be noticed. They are officially described as fireballs if they produce a light brighter than the planet Venus. The brightness of a meteor is caused by friction with the Earth's atmosphere, which is typically far greater than that caused by simple falling, due to the initial trajectory of the object. Such objects typically eventually explode in an airburst called by the friction, causing them to vanish as an luminous object. However this is not the end of the story as such explosions result in the production of a number of smaller objects, which fall to the ground under the influence of gravity (which does not cause the luminescence associated with friction-induced heating).

 

Heat map of the northearn United States and neighbouring areas of Canada showing areas where sightings of the meteor were reported (warmer colours indicate more sightings), and the apparent path of the object (blue arrow). American Meteor Society.  

 

These 'dark objects' do not continue along the path of the original bolide, but neither do they fall directly to the ground, but rather follow a course determined by the atmospheric currents (winds) through which the objects pass. Scientists are able to calculate potential trajectories for hypothetical dark objects derived from meteors using data from weather monitoring services.

   

Witness reports can help astronomers to understand these events. If you witness a fireball-type meteor over the US you can report it to the American Meteor Society here. 

 

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