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Record Floods in Russia's Urals Triggered by Melting Snow

Police officers stand guarding an area as people use rubber boats in a flooded street after part of a dam burst, in Orsk, Russia. (Anatoly Zhdanov/Kommersant Publishing House via AP)
Police officers stand guarding an area as people use rubber boats in a flooded street after part of a dam burst, in Orsk, Russia. (Anatoly Zhdanov/Kommersant Publishing House via AP)
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Record Floods in Russia's Urals Triggered by Melting Snow

Police officers stand guarding an area as people use rubber boats in a flooded street after part of a dam burst, in Orsk, Russia. (Anatoly Zhdanov/Kommersant Publishing House via AP)
Police officers stand guarding an area as people use rubber boats in a flooded street after part of a dam burst, in Orsk, Russia. (Anatoly Zhdanov/Kommersant Publishing House via AP)

Swiftly melting snow triggered the worst recorded flooding in Russia's Ural Mountains, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes as some of Europe's biggest rivers swelled to bursting point.
Russia declared an emergency in the Orenburg region near Kazakhstan after the Ural River, Europe's third longest river, swelled several meters in hours on Friday, and burst through a dam embankment in the city of Orsk.
The river, which rises in the Ural Mountains and flows into the Caspian Sea, will reach dangerous levels on Monday in Orenburg, a city of 500,000 down river from Orsk, and the peak is expected there on April 10, Russia's emergency ministry said, according to Reuters.
More than 10,400 homes across Russia have been flooded, with the Urals, Siberia, the Volga and central regions the worst hit, according to the ministry.
"An increase in air temperatures, active snow melt and river openings are predicted," Russia's emergency ministry said. "More than 10,400 residential buildings remain flooded in 39 regions."
Footage from Orsk, 1,800 km (1,100 miles) east of Moscow, showed one man wading through flood water which reached his neck. He held his keys in his mouth and a black cat above his head.
The streets were submerged in water with residents and emergency workers using boats move around the city.
The mayor of Orenburg, Sergei Salmin, said the Ural River was expected to break the previous record of 9.46 meters. It is currently 8.72 meters.
"Absolutely everyone who is in the flood zone needs to leave their homes," Salmin said. "Do not delay the evacuation! The situation will only get worse in the next two days."
President Vladimir Putin asked the government to form a special commission to deal with the flooding in Orenburg, Kurgan and Tyumen regions, the Kremlin said. Putin was being kept updated on the situation, the Kremlin said.

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Varieties

'Social Studies' TV Series Takes Intimate Dive into Teens' Smartphone Life

This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media. LOIC VENANCE / AFP/File
This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media. LOIC VENANCE / AFP/File
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'Social Studies' TV Series Takes Intimate Dive into Teens' Smartphone Life

This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media. LOIC VENANCE / AFP/File
This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media. LOIC VENANCE / AFP/File

Sifting through the smartphones of dozens of US teens who agreed to share their social media content over the course of a year, filmmaker Lauren Greenfield came to a somber observation.
The kids are "very, very conscious of the mostly negative effects" these platforms are having on them -- and yet they just can't quit.
Greenfield's documentary series "Social Studies," premiering on Disney's FX and Hulu on Friday, arrives at a time of proliferating warnings about the dangers of social networks, particularly on young minds.
The show offers a frightening but moving immersion into the online lives of Gen Z youths, AFP said.
Across five roughly hour-long episodes, viewers get a crash course in just how much more difficult those thorny adolescent years have become in a world governed by algorithms.
In particular, the challenges faced by young people between ages 16 and 20 center on the permanent social pressure induced by platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
For example, we meet Sydney, who earns social media "likes" through increasingly revealing outfits; Jonathan, a diligent student who misses out on his top university picks and is immediately confronted with triumphant "stories" of those who were admitted; and Cooper, disturbed by accounts that glorify anorexia.
"I think social media makes a lot of teens feel like shit, but they don't know how to get off it," says Cooper, in the series.
'Like me more'
This is the first generation born into a world with widespread social media.
Via its subjects' personal smartphone accounts, the show offers a rare glimpse into the ways in which that hyper-connected reality has distorted the process of growing up.
We see how young people modify their body shapes with the swipe of a finger before posting photos, the panic that grips a high school due to fake rumors of a shooting.
"It's hard to tell what's been put into your mind, and what you actually like," says one anonymous girl, in a group discussion filmed for the docuseries.
These discussion circles between adolescents punctuate "Social Studies," and reveal the contradictions between the many young people's online personas, and their underlying anxieties.
Speaking candidly in a group, they complain about harassment, the lack of regulation on social media platforms, and the impossible beauty standards hammered home by their smartphones.
"If I see people with a six pack, I'm like: 'I want that.' Because maybe people would like me more," admits an anonymous Latino boy.
'Lost your social life'
The series is not entirely downbeat.
But the overall sense is a generation disoriented by the great digital whirlwind.
There are no psychologists or computer scientists in the series.
"The experts are the kids," Greenfield told a press conference this summer. "It was actually an opportunity to not go in with any preconceptions."
While "Social Studies" does not offer any judgment, its evidence would appear to support many of the recent health warnings surrounding hyper-online young people.
The US surgeon general, the country's top doctor, recently called for warning labels on social media platforms, which he said were incubating a mental health crisis.
And banning smartphones in schools appears to be a rare area of bipartisan consensus in a politically polarized nation.
Republican-led Florida has implemented a ban, and the Democratic governor of California signed a new law curbing phone use in schools on Monday.
"Collective action is the only way," said Greenfield.
Teenagers "all say 'if you're the only one that goes off (social media), you lost your social life.'"