Afro Sini HD was introduced in response to significant demand from HD+ members for a dedicated African Movie channel. Customers of HD+ with a valid subscription can now access Afro Sini HD, a 24-hour channel that is a part of XYZ Broadcasting. The channel caters to fans of high-quality Ghanaian and African films, television programs, musical performances, and reality shows appropriate for family viewing at no additional cost to current HD+ subscribers with an ongoing subscription.
Bernie Anti, CEO of XYZ Broadcasting detailed, “Growing up, the local word “sini†always brought extra excitement to our otherwise routine lifestyles and this is exactly what we intend to bring to the typical Ghanaian home and every HD+ subscriber. Afro Sini is a full-blown buffet of high-definition African movie content interspersed with sweet, complimentary Afrocentric music. We intend to introduce equally exciting industry-related programming and competitions within the shortest possible time.â€
Commenting on this new value offer, Theodore Asampong, CEO of HD PLUS Ghana, said, “HD+ is the first TV service in Ghana to introduce the Afro Sini HD channel and we are excited about the impact it will make in Ghanaian homes, especially for HD+ subscribers who are looking for premium local Ghanaian and African content in HD quality.â€
The HD+ Decoder offers features that give viewers control over their TV viewing moments such as the ability to pause, record and rewind live TV where viewers can watch TV on the go via the My HD PLUS app on mobile phones and tablets with free data that is provided every month. HD+ Decoders can be purchased at all Multi TV dealers and Electroland outlets across the country and activated on any mobile network by dialing *879# to unlock the HD viewing experience. Existing HD+ subscribers can continue to enjoy the HD+ FeeliFeeli Experience by subscribing to a package via the HD+ USSD code for GHS25 a month. Customers who opt for quarterly and yearly payments will be able to enjoy further discounts from the standard monthly package, using the same USSD short code.
Finland has announced a limitation on tourist visas for Russians.The decision, according to the Finnish foreign minister, was made in response to an increase of Russian visitors utilizing Finland as a jumping-off point for trips to other European countries.
As a result of growing unease over Russian tourism in the wake of the conflict in Ukraine, Finland will limit the number of visas granted to Russians to 10% of the existing amount beginning on September 1.
“Tourist visas will not stop completely, but their number will be significantly reduced, †Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said on Tuesday in Helsinki, amid a rush of Russian visitors bound for Europe.
Haavisto said the decision had come as an influx of Russian tourists began using Finland and its Helsinki-Vantaa airport as a gateway to European holiday destinations, after Russia lifted pandemic-related border restrictions a month ago.
Tourist visas from neighboring Russia will be limited by restricting the allotted opening hours for tourism visa applications, as an outright ban based on nationality is not possible, Haavisto said.
“This means that other types of visas visits relatives, family contacts, work, study will be given preference and more time,†the minister explained.
Currently, Finland processes approximately 1,000 Russian visa applications a day, Haavisto told public broadcaster Yle separately.
Finland will also look into establishing a specific humanitarian visa category, which the country lacks.
“This could make the situation in certain circumstances much easier for journalists or NGO workersâ€, Haavisto said.
Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Finland joined a string of Western countries in closing their airspace to Russian planes in response, making it difficult for Russians to travel to Europe.
The foreign minister also announced that Finland and the Baltics would together propose that the European Union discontinue a visa facilitation agreement with Russia. This would increase the price of tourist visas from 35 euros to 80 (from $35 to $81).
Currently, Finland processes approximately 1,000 Russian visa applications a day, Haavisto told public broadcaster Yle separately.
Finland will also look into establishing a specific humanitarian visa category, which the country lacks.
“This could make the situation in certain circumstances much easier for journalists or NGO workersâ€, Haavisto said.
Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Finland joined a string of Western countries in closing their airspace to Russian planes in response, making it difficult for Russians to travel to Europe.
The foreign minister also announced that Finland and the Baltics would together propose that the European Union discontinue a visa facilitation agreement with Russia. This would increase the price of tourist visas from 35 euros to 80 (from $35 to $81).
A senior US military officer has stated that China’s decision to launch missiles over Taiwan must be disputed.
Vice Admiral Karl Thomas, commander of the Seventh Fleet, described China’s actions as “a gorilla in the room” if they weren’t stopped.
This month, Beijing conducted military exercises around the autonomous island, though it did not confirm whether any missiles actually flew over it.
After US lawmaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, tensions skyrocketed.
Beijing, which asserts sovereignty over the island, was incensed by her high-profile visit.
Tuesday’s comments by Vice Admiral Thomas are significant, Based in Yokosuka, Japan, the Seventh Fleet is the largest forward-Âdeployed fleet in the US Navy, with some 50 to 70 vessels and submarines – and is a key part of its military presence in the region.
“It’s very important that we contest this type of thing. I know that the gorilla in the room is launching missiles over Taiwan,” Vice Admiral Thomas told reporters in Singapore. “It’s irresponsible to launch missiles over Taiwan into international waters.
“If you don’t challenge it… all of a sudden it can become just like the islands in the South China Sea [that] have now become military outposts. They now are full functioning military outposts that have missiles on them, large runways, hangers, radars, listening posts.”
China’s decision to conduct nearly a week of military drills in the waters around Taiwan disrupted major shipping and aerial routes – a move the island said effectively amounted to a blockade. It also accused Beijing of using the drills as practice for an invasion.
Taiwan said the missiles China fired flew high into the atmosphere and posed no threat. Its defense ministry did not disclose the trajectory of the missiles, citing intelligence concerns.
The US and other allies have stepped up naval crossings in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, another area of strategic importance to Beijing, to emphasize that these are international waters.
While the US has official diplomatic relations with China and not Taiwan, it maintains a special relationship with the island, which includes selling weapons for defense – an arrangement that has long troubled China.
In recent years it has also become yet another flashpoint between Washington and Beijing as tensions between the two soured.
The actor, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, is accused of pointing the gun after an argument with a former buddy in November.
He allegedly fired the handgun twice more after that, striking the victim, who was just slightly hurt.
If found guilty, the 33-year-old, who has had two US number one albums, could spend up to nine years behind bars.
The rapper, who had a baby with singer Rihanna in May, is due to appear in court on Wednesday to answer two charges of assault with a semi-automatic firearm with allegations of personally using a firearm.
His lawyer had no immediate comment on the charges.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said: “Discharging a gun in a public place is a serious offense that could have ended with tragic consequences, not only for the person targeted but also for innocent bystanders visiting Hollywood.
“My office conducted a thorough review of the evidence in this case and determined that the addition of a special firearm allegation was warranted.”
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERS
Image caption,
A$AP Rocky and Rihanna welcomed their first child, a boy, in May this year
Police found multiple firearms at Mr. Mayers’ home while serving a search warrant following his arrest.
Terell Ephron, who is part of the A$AP Mob hip-hop collective, identified himself as the victim and sued his former friend last week, alleging assault and battery, negligence, and emotional distress.
Mr. Ephron, also known as A$AP Relli, alleged that Mr. Mayers had “lured” him to an obscure location in Hollywood to discuss a disagreement.
The lawsuit claims that, after a verbal altercation, Mr. Mayers “pulled out a handgun and purposefully pointed it in the direction of [Mr. Ephron] and fired multiple shots”.
Mr. Ephron was “struck by bullet projectile/fragments” in his left hand and required medical attention, according to the court papers. He is seeking at least $25,000 (£20,750) in damages.
Mr. Mayers was previously given a two-year suspended sentence for his role in a brawl in Stockholm in August 2019.
As A$AP Rocky, he was one of the biggest breakout stars of the 2010s, earning eight platinum singles in the US including Wild For The Night, Everyday, LSD, and A$AP Forever.
The official results show that Mr. Odinga fell short against Deputy President William Ruto.
The head of the election board was charged by Mr. Odinga with “blatant contempt for the constitution.”
“We totally without reservation reject the presidential election results,” he said.
Making his remarks in front of supporters in the capital, Nairobi, he said that there was “neither a legally elected winner nor a president-elect”.
The 77-year-old long-time opposition leader was running for president for the fifth time. He has challenged the results in the previous two elections, including successfully in 2017.
This time around, the chairman of the electoral body Wafula Chebukat said he got 48.8% of the vote in last Tuesday’s election compared to Mr. Ruto’s 50.5%.
Mr. Odinga accused Mr. Chebukati of “gross impunity” saying his team will pursue all legal options. He called his declaration “a major setback” to Kenya’s democracy that could trigger a political crisis.
He said that Mr. Chebukati went against the law by announcing the result without the backing of his fellow commissioners. But an ally of Mr. Ruto, Musalia Mudavadi, told BBC Focus on Africa radio that commissioners are required to collate the results but do not determine the result.
This is a legal point that may in the end have to be tested in court.
Minutes before Mr. Odinga spoke, four of seven electoral commissioners who refused to approve Monday’s results, held a press conference to give their reasons.
Juliana Cherera, the vice-chairperson of the commission, said that if you added the percentages as announced by the chairperson of the commission the sum came to 100.01%.
But the BBC’s Reality Check team says that this was down to a rounding error and is not suspicious.
Mr. Odinga has however commended the four commissioners for their “heroism”.
“The majority of (the electoral commission) – who stood up to the bullying and illegal conduct of Mr. Chebukati, we are proud of them and ask them not to fear anything. Kenyans are with them,” he said.
On Monday, Mr. Ruto described the objections of the commissioners as a “side-show”, but said he would respect a legal process. He also called for unity, saying he wanted to be a president for all, and for the country to focus on the future.
Last week’s election was largely peaceful. The electoral commission was widely praised for conducting a transparent process by posting on its website results from more than 46,000 polling stations and encouraging anyone to conduct their own tally.
However, scuffles broke out at the counting center on Monday after Mr. Odinga’s supporters accused the electoral commission of tampering with votes and attempted to block Mr. Chebukati from announcing the final results. At least three poll officials were injured in the melee.
Calm has been restored in the country after a mixture of celebrations and violent protests followed the official declaration of the presidential results.
Thousands of supporters, clad in yellow, Mr. Ruto’s party colors, poured onto the streets of Eldoret in the Rift Valley. In contrast in the western city of Kisumu, Mr. Odinga’s supporters blocked roads and lit bonfires. Similar scenes played out in several towns and in the capital, Nairobi.
Generally ,there is a sense of relief that the counting process is over because the election season often means that life grinds to a halt.
But people will be paying attention to Mr. Odinga’s plans to file a case at the Supreme Court.
For the Ga people, Saturday, August 13, 2022, was another historic day as they lavishly celebrated the Homowo celebration.
It was a proud occasion for the chiefs, leaders, families, and residents of Ga Mashie as well as for the visitors from all walks of life who had come to see one of Ghana’s most well-known festivals being celebrated.
In accordance with tradition, Your Majesty, Nii Dr Ayi Bonte II, Gbese Mantse, sprinkled the first “kpokpoi” to signal the start of the hooting at hungry for the other chiefs to follow.
The British High Commissioner, Naa Okaitoo Nrami I, Gbese Noyaa Manye was actively involved in the celebrations. Harriet Thompson who is the Development queen-mother of Gbese gleefully took part in all activities as she walked the principal street with Nii Dr Ayi Bonte II.
The Gbese Mantse sprinkled the traditional food -‘Kpokpoi’- along the principal streets of Accra which included Ussher Fort and its environs, which used to be the ancestral home before the arrival of the colonial masters.
It was a beautiful day as the traditional leaders painted the capital with their colourful red regalia and warrior attires, with the indigenes, including visitors in red attire.
The streets were busy at around with people, mainly young men and women moving from house to house and street to street to meet family members and friends.
The Gbese Mantse was honoured with the visitation of former President H.E John Dramani Mahama as well as vice-president H.E Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to his Palace.
The management of Senior High Technical School for the Deaf at Akuapem-Mampong in the Eastern Region is disturbed about the increase in hearing impaired students bringing mobile phones to class to watch pornography, gamble, and stake lotteries.
The subject has been repeatedly brought up at general PTA meetings in recent months by school officials, who are threatening to violently seize cell phones discovered with students.
At a recent PTA meeting, management said “It realized that students bring to school expensive phones. Some videos show their nakedness or their sexual acts and these videos sometimes get onto their platforms. Parents were advised to always take wards phones before they come to school since seized phones are never returned to owners.
“Parents must be mindful of their wards at home and the kind of friends they visit and keep as some are betting and staking lotto,†the management said.
Meanwhile, parents are being encouraged to pay the PTA levy of GHC 20 per student approved by the government to support development in the school.
A portion of the amount accrued will be used to pay a monthly allowance to a retired driver to transport the students until the government posts a new driver.
“Students are shuttled between the two campuses every day and so there is a need for drivers in the school. One of the two drivers of the school is retiring next month. But posting of drivers to school is on hold from the Ghana Education Service and the absence of one driver for the school is going to be a very big challenge as a result of our specialty” management added.
Police in New Zealand is looking into the matter after a family discovered human remains inside bags they had bought at an auction from a storage facility.
After unloading their purchases at home, the residents of a South Auckland home discovered the horrifying discovery.
Police have opened a homicide investigation and are looking for the remains’ identity.
It is assumed that the family was not a part of the incident.
It is believed that the family visited the storage facility last Thursday and bought a trailer-load of belongings, which included the luggage, from a nearby storage business.
The discovery was made after the residents brought the property back to their home, detective inspector Tofilau Faamanuia Vaaelua said.
Several neighbors of the family also reported a “wicked smell” emanating from the property before police arrived, according to Stuff.
One neighbor – a former worker at a crematorium – said the smell was immediately recognizable.
“I knew straight away and I thought, where is that coming from?” he said, referring to the residents’ property.
Another neighbor said her son had spotted a suitcase being offloaded from the trailer before being placed in a forensic tent that had been erected around the premises.
Footage published on New Zealand news outlet Stuff showed a trailer parked on the front driveway of the property, located in the suburban area of Clendon Park, as police carried out their investigations.
Friday, August 12, 10:40 a.m. I park my bike in a gravel patch near the Chautauqua Amphitheater, wedging a rock beneath the kickstand so it will not fall. The woman who checks my ticket at the gate is accompanied today by a state trooper and a police dog — not usual for this rural arts community, but warranted: today’s speaker, Salman Rushdie, has lived under threat since his book, “The Satanic Verses,” was published over three decades ago. I zigzag my way down steep stairs to the floor, noticing another trooper standing guard.
Minutes later, Rushdie and Henry Reese walk onstage, set to discuss the US as an asylum for writers and other artists in exile as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series. The audience rises, clapping.
I realize Rushdie will be seated with his back to me, so I move to get a better view, starting down the middle aisle to an empty seat in the third row just as the two take their seats.
Before I take mine, however, a man leaps onstage, hate on two feet, storming Rushdie with lightning speed. The author rises and steps back to evade him, but his black suit and polished shoes are unprepared for the youth in trainers, head wrapped like a ninja, a cyclone of anonymous fury.
Rushdie bends and twists away but the knife is unrelenting, arm raising and falling over and over and over, evading the author’s hands and those attempting to intervene. The crowd gathered at a stage where civil discourse has been practiced for over 130 years, stands watching, frozen not with fear but with shock.
After what seems like ages but I later learn was just seconds, the attacker is taken down by a few men and a state trooper. Rushdie and Reese have both fallen. Blood pools on the stage. A man runs by me, filming the chaos on his phone.
Freedom in retreat
“These are not good days for liberty. If you look around the world, you see that the idea of freedom, freedom which contains a sense of carefree-ness, seems everywhere in retreat, hounded by guns and bombs,” Mr. Rushdie told an audience at Emory University in 2015.
How ironic, that his attacker moved through tree-lined streets where children run free until peals from a bell tower remind them it is time for dinner, where bicycles are not locked and wallets are often returned with cash intact. This is a place where people let down their guard, only too easily. That is part of the charm, but in the days to come, we will surely grapple with that.
The crowd is mostly silent, except for the jagged cries some cannot, do not, still. The attacker is finally subdued, and the police dog stands over him. I wonder if it’s ghoulish to take a picture of the stage at this moment. But the ghoul is already here, I decide.
Rushdie lies still on his back; someone has removed his shoes from his feet and lined them neatly beside him, waiting for him to fill them again. No one else can.
I cannot get back on my bike for shaking, so I walk home. Sirens wail.
By around noon, The New York Times has reported Rushdie was stabbed in the neck, with another witness saying he still had a pulse before he was airlifted to a hospital. I am astounded and relieved that he survived. When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, issued a call for his death in 1989, the author went into hiding but continued to write his intricate and zany books.
He says he must write to survive, or his dreams become increasingly crazy. Waiting for news, I wonder how much crazier a dream can get than this, more nightmare than a fairy tale.
Texts pour in: “Are you there?” “Is it true?” A friend tells me she attended a dinner with Rushdie in February and remembers him saying he was fairly certain someone, somewhere, would get him. Who knew this could happen in this utopian summer community, which tries to combat the dissension in the world with conversation? Words were no match today.
Later in the afternoon, Andrew Wylie, Rushdie’s agent, reports he is in surgery but has no other updates.
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
The vaccination, according to ministers, will now be a part of the autumn booster program.
26 million people are eligible for some version of the booster, but Moderna estimates that just 13 million doses of its new vaccine will be made accessible this year.
According to health officials, people should receive any booster that is recommended because all vaccinations offer protection.
The initial pandemic vaccines were created to prepare the body to combat the virus’s first version, which appeared in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.
The Covid virus has since mutated substantially, with a stream of new variants emerging that can dodge some of our immune defenses. They have caused large surges in cases around the world.
The original vaccines still provide strong protection against becoming severely ill or dying, but companies are tweaking them to match the virus as it evolves.
Cases of coronavirus are currently falling in the UK. In mid-to-late July, around 2.5 million people tested positive for coronavirus.
‘Sharpened tool’
Moderna’s latest vaccine targets both the original strain and the first Omicron variant (BA.1), which emerged last winter. It is known as a bivalent vaccine as it takes aim at two forms of Covid.
Dr. June Raine, the regulator’s chief executive, said: “What this bivalent vaccine gives us is a sharpened tool in our armory to help protect us against this disease as the virus continues to evolve.”
Experiments on 437 people showed the updated vaccine was safe and gave better immune protection against newer variants.
Levels of antibodies that were able to stick to and disable Omicron (BA.1) were 1.7 times higher in people given the new vaccine. Tests against more recent Omicron variants (BA.4 and BA.5), which are causing the UK’s current wave, also showed higher levels of protection with the updated vaccine.
However, it is far from clear what that means in terms of preventing someone from becoming seriously ill.
Additionally, it is uncertain what variants we will be facing in the coming months and exactly how well the updated vaccine will perform against them.
“This represents the first authorization of an Omicron-containing bivalent vaccine; this bivalent vaccine has an important role to play in protecting people in the UK from Covid-19 as we enter the winter months,” he said.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), which advises governments in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, has confirmed the following groups should be offered some form of booster in the autumn:
health and social care staff
everyone aged 50 and over
carers who are over the age of 16
people over five whose health puts them at greater risk, this includes pregnant women
people over five who share a house with somebody with a weakened immune system
Prof Wei Shen Lim, from the JCVI, said: “It is important that everyone who is eligible takes up a booster this autumn, whichever vaccine is on offer.”
Originally those aged 50-65 were not going to be jabbed. However, the immunization campaign has been expanded because of the rapid spread of variants, uncertainty about how the virus will mutate, and the expectation that we will are likely to be more social – and therefore give the virus a helping hand this winter – including at Christmas.
However, most people under 50 will not be boosted in the coming months. The focus remains on preventing those most at risk from becoming seriously ill, rather than stopping the young from passing the virus on to older relatives.
Moderna is not the only company updating its vaccines. Pfizer has also been developing vaccines that can target Omicron. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, however, is not being updated.
Health ministers have officially given the go-ahead for the bivalent vaccines. In England, Steve Barclay said “vaccines remain our best defense against Covid” and said the rollout would begin in September. In Wales, Eluned Morgan said vaccines “have saved countless lives” and urged everyone who was eligible to come forward.
In the midst of emotionalmoments, the chairman of the electoral commission has announced that Deputy President William Ruto has won Kenya’s presidential election.
With 50.4% of the vote, he barely defeated Raila Odinga as his opponent.
The announcement was delayed amid scuffles and allegations of vote-rigging by Mr. Odinga‘s campaign.
Due to disputes and claims of vote manipulation by Mr. Odinga’s team, the declaration was postponed.
Four of the seven members of the electoral commission refused to endorse the announcement, saying the results were “opaque”.
“We cannot take ownership of the result that is going to be announced because of the opaque nature of this last phase of the general election,” said Juliana Cherera, the vice-chairperson of theIndependent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
“We are going to give a comprehensive statement… and again we urge Kenyans to keep calm. There is an open door that people can go to court and the rule of law will prevail,” she said.
Mr. Odinga’s party agent earlier alleged that there were “irregularities” and “mismanagement” in the election.
This was the first time Mr. Ruto, 55, had run for president. He has served as deputy president for 10 years but fell out with President Uhuru Kenyatta, who backed Mr. Odinga to succeed him.
The majority of Asian markets increased on Monday as investors cheered evidence of declining US inflation; however, Hong Kong and Shanghai declined as statistics indicated that China’s economy was suffering due to the Covid-19 limitations.
The markets have been worried that additional hikes of a comparable magnitude could stifle economic recovery after two straight increases in borrowing costs by the Federal Reserve of three-quarters of a percentage point.
Last week’s indicators of improved inflation statistics have sparked discussion about whether the Fed may change course more rapidly from its current stance of moving aggressively to raise interest rates.
“We’re definitely heading in a better direction,” Kristina Hooper, Invesco chief global market strategist, told Bloomberg Television.
“It looks like we are passed peak for inflation. The problem is inflation is still very, very high.”
Wall Street ended Friday on a positive note after consumer and producer price data indicated a meaningful cooling in inflation.
The optimistic mood carried over to Asia, with Tokyo climbing one percent as GDP data showed the Japanese economy recovering after the government lifted Covid-19 curbs on businesses.
Sydney rose 0.5 percent and Taipei was up 0.7 percent. Wellington, Manila, and Kuala Lumpur also saw gains. Seoul and Mumbai were closed for holidays.
Among the few losers, Hong Kong and Shanghai fell as Chinese economic figures came in weaker than analysts’ expectations.
China unexpectedly cut key interest rates as a raft of data released Monday indicated the world’s second-largest economy was struggling with virus restrictions and a slumping property market.
The figures showed China’s industrial production and retail sales growth for July came in lower than expected. Industrial production was up 3.8 percent year-on-year, but down from 3.9 percent in June and below Bloomberg economists’ forecasts of a 4.3 percent increase.
“The risk of stagflation in the world economy is rising, and the foundation for domestic economic recovery is not yet solid,” China’s National Bureau of Statistics warned.
Beijing’s rigid adherence to a zero-Covid strategy has held back economic recovery as snap lockdowns and long quarantines batter business activity and a recovery in consumption.
“July’s economic data is very alarming,” Raymond Yeung, Greater China economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, told Bloomberg.
“The Covid-zero policy continues to hit the service sector and dampen household consumption.”
Oil was lower in Asian trade, with WTI down one percent at $91.20 while Brent was off 0.9 percent at $97.25.
Recent torrential rain has caused flooding in Northern Nigeria and has killed about fifty people and displaced many, according to reports from the executive secretary of the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) for Jigawa State, Sani Yusuf.
According to Sani Yusuf, executive secretary of the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) for Jigawa State, at least 50 people have died, and “many” have been relocated as a result of recent severe rains that triggered floods in northern Nigeria.
“When you go around [Jigawa State], we lost about 50 people to the flood,” Yusuf told reporters on camera Sunday from the city of Dutse, which was broadcast by local media.
Nigeria’s Federal Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Sadiya Farouq also visited Jigawa State recently to distribute relief materials, the federal ministry tweeted.
“This incident is particularly sad because it has become perennial. This is causing serious damage to schools, houses, and the livelihood of the people,” Farouq told reporters on camera.
Farouq said Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management to activate National Emergency Management Agency to provide the necessary support to those affected by the floods.
The floods come after days of severe thunderstorms which have prompted flash flooding warnings from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency.
Many parts of Jigawa are vulnerable to flooding after rainstorms. Earlier in August, around seven people died and dozens of buildings were destroyed following flooding from heavy rains in seven districts in the northeastern Nigerian state.
Last year, more than 120 families were displaced in the state’s Guri district when their homes were submerged by floods after a heavy downpour.
“Desilting a river is not a solution to flooding, it’s a temporary solution, it takes a lot of money. If all the budgets of the federal government and Jigawa State are combined to desilt River Hadejia, we cannot achieve it,” Adamu said, adding that: “There are no short-term measures to stop flooding but we can mitigate and do early warning.”
Despite ten years of discussions, the UN High Seas Treaty is still not in force.
By 2030, 30% of the oceans in the globe would be protected if they were to be adopted.
Aiming to safeguard marine life from overfishing and other human activities, campaigners seek to achieve this.
Two-thirds of the world’s oceans are currently considered international waters, which means all countries have a right to fish, ship, and do research there. But only 1.2% of these high seas, as they are referred to, are protected.
This leaves the marine life living there at risk of exploitation from the increasing threats of climate change, overfishing, and shipping traffic.
And with ecosystems on the high seas poorly documented, there is concern among conservationists that creatures could become extinct before they are discovered.
Research published earlier this year, and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that between 10% and 15% of marine species are already at risk of extinction.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has said at previous negotiations that the “traditional fragmented nature of ocean governance” has prevented the effective protection of the high seas.
IMAGE SOURCE, LEISA TYLER/ GETTY IMAGES
The treaty would place parts of the world’s oceans into a network of Marine Protected Areas. Environmental impact assessments would be carried out before allowing commercial activities like deep-sea mining to go ahead.
Deep-sea mining is when minerals are taken from the sea bed that is 200m or more below the surface. These minerals include cobalt which is used for electronics, but the process could also be toxic for marine life, according to the IUCN.
As of March 2022, the International Seabed Authority, which regulates these activities, had issued 31 contracts to explore the deep sea for minerals.
Countries are also looking to include measures in the treaty that give developing and landlocked nations more equal access to Marine Genetic Resources (MGR).
MGR is biological materials from plants and animals in the ocean that can have benefits for society such as pharmaceuticals, industrial processes, and food.
But progress has been slow due to Covid-19 preventing countries’ meetings. Disagreement over what should be included in the legal treaty also delayed it.
Some nations such as Russia and Iceland want fisheries to be excluded.
In March, countries agreed to have a final fifth session to try and sign the Treaty – with a deadline set for the end of the year.
Should this not happen, an EU spokesperson told the BBC it was still committed to the issue: “The EU will insist on the quick continuation of the negotiations.”
“Action is needed to ensure the conservation and the sustainable use of the Ocean for current and future generations,” they added.
At the end of the last round of failed negotiations, conference president Rena Lee said: “I believe that with continued commitment, determination and dedication, we will be able to build bridges and close the remaining gaps.”
Protecting the world’s oceans is also important for human populations as so many people rely on the seas for food, income, and leisure activities.
It is estimated that global marine ecosystems are worth more than £41 trillion, according to researchers at Plymouth Marine Laboratory.
 A Pennsylvania woman, Marguerite Koller, of Blue Bell, recently celebrated the birth of her 100th great-grandchild, Koller William, according to NBC Philadelphia. The 99-year-old got a chance to meet the baby boy shortly before her 100th birthday. She is marking two major milestones in just a matter of months.
“I’m just thinking about how lucky I am,” she said while holding her newest great-grandkid, who is named after her and her late husband, William.
“I actually applied when I was a junior in high school but he talked me out of it,” she told ABC station WPVI-TV in 2015.
Marguerite is the mother of 11 children and has 56 grandchildren, leading to her now-100 great-grandchildren, NBC Philadelphia reported.
Originally, the new baby was supposed to be her 99th great-grandchild, but the little one claimed the special title after being born more than a week after his predicted due date.
Christine Balster, Marguerite’s granddaughter and mother of the 100th great-grandchild, said she and her husband Patrick wanted to honor both of her grandparents with their son’s name.
“My husband liked the name Kole, and it felt very natural to name him Koller and William as the middle name,” she told NBC Philadelphia.
William died in 2008, according to the 2015 report from WPVI-TV.
Baby Koller now joins multiple generations descending from his great-grandmother Marguerite, whom Christine described as a “lovely, sweet [and] strong lady.”
The new mom also praised the “amazing legacy” her grandmother has built.
In WPVI-TV’s 2015 report, Marguerite’s family described the matriarch as “an inspiration.”
“And to be the age she is and still going about it every day,” said Greg Stokes, Koller’s grandson, “it’s unbelievable.”
The miners became trapped on 3 August when a wall in a tunnel collapsed and water from an adjacent chamber gushed into the three shafts.
Officials say the water has to drop to a depth of 1.5m (5ft) to allow rescuers to enter the shafts safely.
But on Sunday, it suddenly rose again to more than 20m.
The governor of Coahuila state, where the coal mine is located, said the water was probably flowing into the shafts from a nearby disused mine. Governor Miguel Riquelme said engineers were trying to find the source of the leak so they can block it.
More than 200 million liters have been pumped from the shafts so far, but the rescue work has been hampered by a number of setbacks.
Last week, a special underwater drone carrying a camera was lowered into one of the shafts.
Relatives of the miners had hoped the drone would provide them with long-awaited news on their loved ones, from whom there has been no sign of life since the accident 12 days ago.
But the drone failed to reach the depth at which the miners are believed to have become trapped.
“There are a great number of solid obstacles and turbulence in the water, which make visibility very limited,” a statement said.
“These are not conditions in which we can send in search and rescue teams.”
Relatives of the 10 trapped miners again expressed frustration and anger at the slow pace of the rescue effort and at what they said was a lack of communication.
“We want them (authorities) to tell us what is happening: if they have identified the places where water is coming through and why,” a member of miner Sergio Cruz’s family told Reuters news agency.
Priests in the area have been saying prayers for the miners’ rescue.
In a breakthrough that could enhance the supply of organs for transplant, researchers have effectively changed the blood type of the donor’s kidneys.
The discovery has special implications for underrepresented populations, for whom it is frequently more difficult to find a match.
A blood type A person cannot donate their kidney to a type B person, and vice versa.
However, making a kidney’s blood type the universal type O will enable it to be transplanted into any recipient.
People from black and other ethnic minority groups often have to wait a year longer for a transplant than white patients because they are more likely to have the rarer B-type blood group.
Rates of organ donation among those populations are also lower. In 2020/21, just over 9% of total organ donations came from black and other minority ethnic donors, while people from those communities make up 33% of the kidney transplant waiting list.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge were able to use a normothermic perfusion machine – a device used to pass oxygenated blood through a kidney to help preserve it – to flush blood infused with an enzyme through a donor’s kidney.
The enzyme removes the blood-type markers that line the blood vessels of the organ, effectively changing its blood type to type O. The process took a matter of hours when it was successfully performed on three donor kidneys.
Serena MacMillan, a Ph.D. student who worked on the study, said it was “very exciting to think about how this could potentially impact so many lives”.
The next step is to see how the kidneys react when given a normal supply of blood from their new blood group, something which can again be tested using a machine before the kidney is transplanted into a patient.
The research, which is funded by the charity Kidney Research UK, is due to be published in the British Journal of Surgery in the coming months.
Dr. Aisling McMahon, executive director of research at the charity, called the work “potentially game-changing”.
This is a fascinating and compelling idea, but its impact on organ transplantation is still unproven.
There are questions about the science and how much more it can increase the availability of organs for donation.
It will take further tests to see how these tweaked organs perform when actually dealing with formerly mismatched blood. And to ensure their process does not damage the kidneys in any way.
This will have to be tested in the laboratory and then in small numbers of patients.
Also, the blood group is only one of three ways kidneys are matched before transplant and half the population is already either O positive or O negative (whose kidneys can be donated to anybody).
Tissue matching and cross-matching (in which the blood of donor and recipient are mixed to see if there’s a reaction) will still be a factor, particularly in ethnic groups.
The couple’s most recent visit to the UK was in June for the Platinum Jubilee festivities.
The Sussexes, who stepped down as senior royals in January 2020, live in California.
They kept a low-key presence during the celebrations for the Platinum Jubilee – watching the Trooping the Colour parade in London from a window and not taking part in the carriage procession.
A spokesperson for the couple said they are “delighted” to be visiting the UK.
The Duchess, who will give a keynote address at the opening ceremony, is a counselor for One Young World, among others including Jamie Oliver, Sir Richard Branson, and Justin Trudeau.
Prince Harry and Meghan will return to the UK on 8 September for the WellChild Awards in London where the duke will make a speech.
Before that, they will attend the Invictus Games Dusseldorf 2023 One Year to Go event.
The duke was inspired to set up the Invictus Games after seeing a similar event in the US were injured and retired service personnel competed.
The first competition was held in London in 2014, with the following games being held in the US, Canada, and Australia.
Prince Harry is currently involved in a legal battle with the Home Office over his security arrangements in the UK.
He has asked for a review of the decision to not allow him to pay for police protection for himself and his family while in the country.
The Platinum Jubilee was the first time the duke and duchess had made an appearance together at a royal engagement since 2020.
The couple visited the Queen in April on their way to the Invictus Games in the Netherlands.
Before this, Prince Harry was last reported to be in the UK in the previous July, while Meghan was not thought to have been in the country since 2020.
Australian PM Anthony Albanese says he will investigate reports that his predecessor, Scott Morrison, secretly assumed three roles in the ministry.
Mr. Morrison became joint minister for the health, finance, and resources portfolios in the two years before he lost power in May, local media report.
Mr. Albanese said he would seek legal advice about the decisions, calling them “unacceptable” and “just weird”.
The former prime minister has declined to comment.
On Monday, Governor-General David Hurley – the Queen’s representative in Australia – confirmed he had signed an “administrative instrument” that had allowed Mr. Morrison to secretly take on the portfolios. It was “consistent with section 64 of the constitution”, a spokesperson said.
But Mr. Albanese, law experts, and Mr. Morrison’s former colleagues have criticized the secrecy surrounding it.
Even some ministers were reportedly not aware they were sharing portfolios with the former prime minister.
“This is the sort of ‘tin pot’ activity that we would ridicule if it was in a non-democratic country,” Mr. Albanese told reporters on Monday.
Local media reported that former Health Minister Greg Hunt agreed in 2020 to share his portfolio in the event he became incapacitated from Covid.
But then-Finance Minister Mathias Cormann – now head of the OECD – only learned last week that his role had been jointly held, said a report by local outlet News.com.au.
Mr. Morrison was sworn in as a second resources minister – joining Keith Pitt – last year. Mr. Morrison used his powers to block a gas exploration license in New South Wales – a decision opposed by Mr. Pitt.
Mr. Albanese said he would not speculate on forthcoming legal advice but accused his predecessor of having governed “in the shadows”.
When asked to respond to Mr. Albanese’s comments, Mr. Morrison said he wasn’t aware of them. “Since leaving the job I haven’t engaged in any day-to-day politics,” he told Sky News Australia.
“I found out about it, and I disagree with it. I believe in a cabinet system of government where ministers are responsible for their own portfolios. We don’t have a presidential form of government,” Mr. Joyce told Channel 7.
The center-right coalition suffered a convincing defeat in May’s general election. It lost many seats in cities – where climate action and political integrity were seen as key issues.
In July, Mr. Morrison drew controversy by telling churchgoers “don’t trust in governments” and “don’t trust in the United Nations” during a speech in Perth.
There are so many questions and you’d be forgiven for being confused. No one is sure who knew what, when.
It would be normal for a leader to make sure that someone can step up and do the job if a minister is incapacitated, especially at the height of the pandemic.
But there are many ways of doing this. Why did it have to be him? And more crucially, why the secrecy?
As it stands, nothing about these gels. But here’s why this could potentially be a big deal.
For a leader of any country, let alone a democracy, to take over several portfolios without the public’s knowledge or the knowledge of his own colleagues, raises serious questions.
If confirmed, this also means that the then-prime minister was potentially aiming to centralize power so that the decision-making would ultimately come down to him.
Remember, this was happening at a time when Australia was in and out of lockdowns and when the Morrison government faced a lot of criticism for the way they handled the vaccination program.
Confidence in the Morrison government was waning – but as the current prime minister put it, it seems that even Scott Morrison had no confidence in the Morrison government.
Iranian media have extensively commented on the attack, calling it “divine retribution”.
Iran’s state broadcaster daily Jaam-e Jam highlighted the news that Rushdie might lose an eye following the attack, saying “an eye of the Satan has been blinded”.
As news emerged of Friday’s attack, eyes turned to Tehran where the fatwa – religious edict – calling for the writer’s assassination was first issued more than three decades ago.
But on Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani Tehran “categorically” denied any link, adding “no one has the right to accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
However, he said freedom of speech did not justify Mr. Rushdie’s insulting religion in his writing.
“In this attack, we do not consider anyone other than Salman Rushdie and his supporters worthy of blame and even condemnation,” the spokesman said during his weekly press conference in Tehran.
“By insulting the sacred matters of Islam and crossing the red lines of more than 1.5 billion Muslims and all followers of the divine religions, Salman Rushdie has exposed himself to the anger and rage of the people.”
Iran had no other information about Rushdie’s assailant except what has appeared in the media, he added.
Mr. Blinken had earlier denounced Iran’s state institutions for inciting violence against the author.
He said in a statement that Mr. Rushdie had “consistently stood up for the universal rights of freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and freedom of the press”.
“While law enforcement officials continue to investigate the attack, I am reminded of the pernicious forces that seek to undermine these rights, including through hate speech and incitement to violence.
“Specifically, Iranian state institutions have incited violence against Rushdie for generations, and state-affiliated media recently gloated about the attempt on his life. This is despicable.”
Mr. Blinken added the US and its partners would use “every appropriate tool” at their disposal to stand up to what he called “these threats”.
On Sunday, Mr. Rushdie’s son said the author was still in a critical condition: “Though his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humor remains intact,” he said.
The family was “extremely relieved” when Mr. Rushdie was taken off a ventilator on Saturday, he said, adding that his father was able to “say a few words”.
The author’s agent Andrew Wylie said the celebrated novelist suffered severed nerves in one arm, damage to his liver, and would likely lose an eye.
The man charged over Friday’s attack – named Hadi Matar, aged 24 – has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault. He is accused of running onto the stage and stabbing Mr. Rushdie at least 10 times in the face, neck, and abdomen.
The novelist was forced into hiding for nearly 10 years after The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. Many Muslims reacted with fury to it, arguing that the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad was a grave insult to their faith.
Mr. Rushdie faced death threats and the then-Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa – or decree – calling for Mr. Rushdie’s assassination, placing a $3m (£2.5m) bounty on the author’s head.
The fatwa remains active, and although Iran’s government has distanced itself from Mr. Khomeini’s decree, a quasi-official Iranian religious foundation added a further $500,000 to the reward in 2012.
Hospital records were obtained by CNN and scores of parishioners gathered for Sunday morning mass at a church in Giza, greater Cairo, and it indicated that at least 18 youngsters perished in the fire.
According to a statement from Egypt’s Coptic Church and health officials, there have been 41 fatalities and 14 injuries. According to hospital records, the kids ranged in age from 3 to 16.
According to Egypt’s Interior Ministry, an electrical failure in an air conditioner on the second floor of the church caused the fire to start at around 9 a.m. local time. In the densely populated Imbaba area lies the modest church.
Most of the deaths and injuries were caused by smoke inside church classrooms after the electrical failure, the ministry said in a Facebook post.
At least two officers and three civil protection service members were injured responding to the fire, the ministry said.
Church officials also believe the fire was accidental, said Coptic Church spokesperson Archpriest Moussa Ibrahim, adding a priest was among those killed.
Egypt’s Coptic community and churches have been a target of religious-based violence and attacks historically, with persecution and discrimination spiking since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s regime in 2011.
“We are in continuous contact with the local authorities and the Health Ministry,” the head of the Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, said, according to the church spokesperson.
Youssef Islam, 16, who works at a bakery next door to the church said the worst of the flames were on the fourth floor. He said he ran into the church and intended to get water from the third floor to help put out flames on the floor above.
But when he forced his way through a door, he saw children’s bodies piled on top of each other. “A horrible scene,” he said. “This was probably the nursery.”
Mariam Malak, 23, told CNN that she left the church shortly before the fire broke out.
“I left the church after Sunday mass and was on my way to work when my mom called me. She thought I was caught in the fire. I turned back and saw (the) church in flames. I just missed it by only a few minutes,” she said.
“Everyone who was there went up to the heavens, including our father Abdel Masih, who led the prayers this morning, and a lot of our families and friends. We are trying to identify everyone now.”
The fire broke out during a Sunday service at the Abu Sefein Coptic church.
CNN also spoke to a family that was driving through the neighborhood looking for the body of their cousin after the fire subsided.
“I can’t believe I won’t see you again, Irini. Why did you leave us so fast?” one of the women, Afaf, murmured to herself throughout the drive from one church to the other. Afaf’s sister Amany Marina held her hand and prayed in silence. Their cousin Amany cried silently in the front seat as her husband, Sameh, kept driving.
It was almost sunset when they made it to the church in the Al-Warraq neighborhood where the prayer for the dead was held. The three women held hands as they walked through security.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi tweeted his condolences to the victims of the fire.
“I offer my sincere condolences to the families of the innocent victims who moved to the side of their Lord in one of the houses of worship,” Sisi said.
The Egyptian President said he is closely following developments of the “tragic accident” and that he has directed state agencies to take the necessary measures to immediately deal with the tragedy and provide care for the injured.
Sisi has directed the Armed Forces Engineering Authority to repair the church, the spokesperson for the Coptic Orthodox Church announced, according to state news Ahram online.
Chairman of the Egyptian Armed Forces Engineering Authority Hesham El Swefy told Pope Tawadros in a phone call about Sisi’s instructions to reconstruct the church, the state news agency said.
Egyptian soccer player Mo Salah, who plays for Liverpool and captains the national team, also sent a message of support to those affected by the tragedy on Sunday, saying in a tweet: “My sincere condolences to the victims of the Abu Sefein Church, and my best wishes for a speedy recovery to all the injured.”
A preliminary investigation into the fire “indicated that the blaze was caused by an electrical short circuit,” Egyptian state news reported, citing a statement from prosecutor-general Hamada El Sawy.
El Sawy visited the site and said eyewitnesses told his team the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit in a power generator, according to Egyptian state news.
“The prosecution team has examined all of the victims’ bodies and found no visible injuries on the deceased bodies except suffocation signs,” El Sawy said.
The public prosecution has questioned 14 of the injured and ordered the Public Administration for Criminal Evidence to collect evidence at the scene, according to the statement quoted.
The honor was established to remember Komla Dumor, a BBC World News presenter who passed away unexpectedly in 2014 at the age of 41.
Buyoya follows in the footsteps of Victoria Rubadiri, Solomon Serwanjja, Waihiga Mwaura, Amina Yuguda, Didi Akinyelure and Nancy Kacungira.
The runner-up for this year’s prize is Ivory Coast’s Lindsay Aida Guei, who presents her own talk show on Canal+ Elles, an Africa-focused TV channel.
The Zambian reporter will spend three months working with BBC News teams in London across TV, radio, and online. He will also receive training and be mentored by leading BBC journalists.
As part of the placement, he will travel to a country in Africa to report on a story that will be broadcast to the BBC’s global audiences.
“Finding out I’d won the BBC News Komla Dumor Award is one of the best things to have happened in my life,” Buyoya says.
“I have a huge admiration for Komla’s prodigious work. I’ve always wanted to be a journalist and I’d watch back Komla’s news reports, inspired by his powerful storytelling and his dedication to covering Africa authentically.
“I’m truly grateful to be part of Komla’s legacy.”
“We’re looking forward to welcoming Buyoya to BBC News. We’re excited by his journalistic talent, and seeing him flourish during his BBC placement,” says BBC Africa head Juliet Njeri.
“His dedication to ensuring important news stories from Africa are told in a compelling and engaging way, makes him ideal to help to continue Komla’s legacy – sharing nuanced and comprehensive stories about the continent.”
The BBC’s Komla Dumor had a charismatic presenting style
Customers at an Ikea branch in Shanghai fled in panic on Saturday after local health officials ordered the business to close down after a Covid-19 case’s close contact was found there.
CNN has reached out to Ikea’s press office in Shanghai for comment.
In a press briefing Sunday, Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, said the “store and affected area” would be under “closed loop” management for two days. People inside the loop must undergo two days of quarantine and five days of health surveillance.
On Monday, city health authorities reported six locally transmitted Covid-19 cases in Shanghai, of which five were asymptomatic.
Shanghai, China’s financial capital and home to 25 million people, was locked down for two months earlier this year, leading to widespread public anger as residents reported difficulties in ordering daily essentials including food and medicine.
The lockdown was imposed under China’s rigid zero-Covid policy, which relies on mass testing, extensive quarantines, and even confinement of entire cities to stamp out any resurgence of the virus.
They came for a beach holiday. Now they’re trapped in China’s latest Covid lockdown
Relying on mobile technology and big data, the Chinese government uses a color-based “health code” system to control people’s movements and curb the spread of the virus.
People in many Chinese cities must present a green health QR code to ride public transport and enter venues including shopping malls, gyms, and restaurants. The system logs their whereabouts and whether they have been in contact with a confirmed Covid-19 case — those whose health codes turn red face almost certain confinement to quarantine facilities.
Snap lockdowns have become common in the country, with the public growing increasingly frustrated with the stringent rules as the economy struggles to adapt to the disruption.
There is growing hope that the much-anticipated outcomes of last week’s presidential election in Kenya will be made public soon.
The national tallying center is getting ready for the declaration as the desks utilized for the result verification procedure have been cleaned.
According to the most recent results, Deputy President William Ruto has a slim advantage against former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
The findings must be made public by 16 August in accordance with the Kenyan constitution.
On Sunday, both Mr. Odinga and Mr. Ruto urged anxious Kenyans to be patient as they wait for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to determine which of them would be the country’s fifth president.
There have also been calls for peace from several leaders and bodies including the Catholic church which asked for “patience and civility” and urged the main candidates to show “restraint and statesmanship”.
Mr Ruto leads the official tally at 51% against Mr. Odinga’s 48%, according to local media. Verified results from 39 of the 290 constituencies are yet to be declared.
Media organizations have also been releasing provisional tallies using official data from the 46,000 polling stations. They also show a tight race. About 14 million votes were cast – a turnout of 65%.
In 2017, the bloc’s worst wildfire year, about 420,000 hectares had been burnt by mid-August before a devastating October pushed it up to 988,087 hectares for the whole year. With the fire season far from over, the EFFIS warned that this year could set a new record.
This year so far is “just below 2017,” EFFIS coordinator Jesús San-Miguel told Agence France-Presse on Sunday. “The situation in terms of drought and extremely high temperatures have affected all of Europe this year and the overall situation in the region is worrying, while we are still in the middle of the fire season.”
Spain, Romania, and Portugal are the worst affected EU members. France has also been hit hard, with more than 60,000 hectares burnt as of this week, far surpassing the country’s previous record of 43,600 hectares for the entire year of 2019.
French President Emmanuel Macron will meet with firefighters, farmers, EU emergency responders, and officials to discuss future strategies for wildfire prevention and response once the fires have died down, according to the president’s team cited in Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday.
Firefighters in France this weekend managed to halt the spread of a vast fire that ravaged 6,000 hectares of pine forest within 24 hours in the southwestern region of Gironde. Hundreds of firefighters from other EU countries had rushed to France’s aid over the past week to help contain the blaze.
But with Europe heating up, wildfires are increasingly erupting farther north, too. The EFFIS‘s San Miguel said that since 2010, there had been a trend toward more fires in central and northern Europe.
With this week’s heat wave subsiding and rain bringing some relief, EFFISÂ said on Sunday that the wildfire situation was improving. However, the risk remains high for the Iberian Peninsula and from eastern France across Belgium into Germany.
According to a survey conducted by the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) among its members, half of the businesses in Bulgaria have modified their employees’ salaries to reflect the rising inflation.
Between July 19 and July 29, a survey was conducted to investigate how inflation affects the labor market.
Nearly 80% of entrepreneurs reported a serious increase in the prices of raw materials and energy products. One-third of the companies have postponed investments to be able to compensate for the inflation levels, and in over a quarter of the companies the turnover has increased but the amount of their profit has decreased. 21% of respondents saw a reduction in staff numbers. Others pointed out that, as a result of inflation, Bulgaria had lost some of its competitive advantages over other EU producers.
53% of entrepreneurs have increased employee salaries in order to adjust them to the increased prices of goods and services.
The data confirmed the concerns about the need to increase wages, expressed by 51% of Bulgarian business people in the June poll in the context of expectations of Bulgaria’s accession to the euro area.
For half of the entrepreneurs, the wage increase was between 5% and 10%. 24% of the enterprises have increased wages ahead of inflation, above or at the rate of inflation as of June 2022, which is close to 17%. 9% say the increase was 3.3%, which is as much as inflation for 2021.
Businesses express serious concerns about future inflation in Bulgaria and Europe. According to some, the crisis is only now beginning. 66% of entrepreneurs do not expect inflation to return to pre-crisis levels soon, and over 20% say they expect it to fall seriously when the political situation in the country stabilizes or when the war in Ukraine ends. Only 2% expect inflation to recover to tolerable levels by the end of the year.
The transition committee chairman of Nnewi North Local Government Area, Hon Mbazulike Iloka, has been suspended by Anambra State Governor Prof. Chukwuma Soludo due to the circumstances surrounding the death of his wife on Sunday morning.
Chidiebere, Iloka’s wife, is reported to have slouched and passed away on Sunday morning after preparing her husband breakfast.
People who are familiar with the pair, however, insist that the LG Chairman may have killed his wife since he has a history of repeatedly beating her.
It is reported that a huge wound was discovered on her head as signs of violence were also found on her body. This has led to a public outcry over her death.
In a letter of suspension, which was signed by Anambra State Commissioner for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Community Affair, Tony Collins Nwabunwanne, the chairman was asked to hand it over to the head of Local Government administration, to avoid interfering in the investigation.
The letter read: “Following the sad news of the death of your wife, late Mrs. Chidiebere Iloka on 7th August 2022, there has been a massive outcry over the circumstances leading to her death, including alleged possible homicide.
“While you are presumed innocent until the completion of investigations, it has become imperative that you step aside to allow unfettered investigation and justice.
“Consequently, you are directed to step aside and to hand over the affairs of the local government to the head of local government administration, not later than 12th August 2022, until further notice.â€
A celebrated author and winner of the world’s top literary prizes Salman Rushdie, whose writings have attracted death threats has been attacked and apparently stabbed in the neck on stage Friday before giving a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, State Police said.
Police say a state trooper on the scene arrested the suspect.
Rushdie was airlifted to a local hospital according to the police, but his current state is unknown.
However, an interviewer also suffered a minor head injury, police said.
Medical staff and police were called to the amphitheater, according to a Chautauqua spokesperson who would not elaborate or confirm details about the incident.
Salman Rushdie’s treatment of delicate political and religious subjects turned him into a controversial figure.
A witness in the audience told CNN he saw Rushdie attack on stage.
The witness could not confirm what was used in the attack, adding that he was 75 feet from the stage.
The 75-year-old novelist — the son of a successful Muslim businessman in India — was educated in England, first at Rugby School and later at the University of Cambridge where he received an MA degree in history.
After college, he began working as an advertising copywriter in London, before publishing his first novel, “Grimus” in 1975.
Rushdie’s treatment of delicate political and religious subjects turned him into a controversial figure. But it was the publication of his fourth novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1988 that hounded him for more than three decades.
Some Muslims found the book to be sacrilegious and it sparked public demonstrations. In 1989, the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called Rushdie a blasphemer and said “The Satanic Verses” was an insult to Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, and issued a religious decree, or fatwa, calling for his death.
As a result, the Mumbai-born writer spent a decade under British protection before the Iranian government announced it would no longer seek to enforce the fatwa in 1998.
Police believe an Italian guy who was rescued from a collapsed tunnel close to the Vatican may have been trying to tunnel into a bank.
After firefighters spent eight hours pulling him out from beneath a road, he is now recovering in a hospital.
However, given that he and another guy were both detained by police for causing damage to public property, he may now need to save himself from even more trouble.
Officers believe he may have been part of a gang trying to break into a bank.
Two other men were arrested for “resisting a public official” after trying to escape from the site, Rai News reports.
Three of the four men managed to escape before the tunnel collapsed, leaving the final man trapped six meters below.
“We are still investigating, we do not exclude that they are thieves, it is one of the theories,” a police spokesman told the AFP news agency.
The tunnel, which began in an empty, newly-rented shop, was in an area close to two banks.
Local media believe the motive to be clear, noting that the tunnel was found near a bank shortly before the 15 August long weekend, when much of the city empties.
“The hole gang,” read the headline in the Corriere della Sera daily.
Michele, a resident who lives in the same building, said residents had no idea what was going on, adding: “We all thought that the people there were renovating the place.”
The head of the FBI said violence and threats against the agency “should be deeply concerning to all Americans”.
Police have not formally identified the suspect killed in Ohio on Thursday, and did not comment on his motive during news briefings.
Unnamed law enforcement officials told US media the suspect may have been present at the Capitol building in Washington on the day of last year’s riot by Trump supporters, although he was not charged with any crimes in connection to the disorder.
Police said the suspect tried unsuccessfully to breach a visitor security screening area at the FBI office in Cincinnati at around 09:15 (13:15 GMT).
He fled the area, but was spotted about 20 minutes later by a police officer, Ohio State Highway Patrol spokesman Nathan Dennis told a news conference.
IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERS
A chase ensued until the suspect stopped and exchanged gunfire with officers before fleeing into a cornfield.
After an hours-long standoff, he raised a weapon toward officers and was killed by police around 15:00 local time, said, Mr. Dennis. No police were injured in the shootout.
According to NBC News, the man fired a nail gun at the FBI building and was also armed with a semi-automatic rifle.
There are two social media accounts in the reported name of the suspect, according to the BBC’s disinformation reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh.
Most of the tweets were about the 2020 election, saying it had been stolen from Mr. Trump. The posts also included calls for violence against Democrats, the FBI, and the Supreme Court.
At least two posts on the Twitter account – including one saying “I was there” – suggest the person attended the Capitol riot.
On Truth Social, the website owned by Mr. Trump, an account in the name of one Ricky Shiffer posted earlier on Thursday, calling for Americans to “be ready to combat”, adding: “I am proposing war.”
One post appeared to have been made after the incident at the FBI office in Cincinnati.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2017, said in a statement that “unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others.
“Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans.”
In a speech to FBI field agents in the state of Nebraska on Wednesday, he called online threats to officials “deplorable and dangerous”, adding: “Violence against law enforcement is not the answer, no matter who you’re upset with.”
Authorities declared large portions of England officially to be in a drought on Friday, asking locals and businesses to save water during the driest summer in 50 years.
Following the National Drought Group meeting, which was attended by water corporations, ministers, and other water authorities, the Environment Agency declared that England’s south, southwest, and southeast, together with the central and eastern regions, are experiencing drought conditions. London, the capital, is also affected in some areas.
The UK has had five consecutive months of below-average rainfall and back-to-back heat waves, with temperatures expected to peak on Saturday as high as 37 Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some parts. Only two months since the start of 2021 have seen at least average rainfall.
Southern England received just 17% of its average rainfall in July, according to the UK Met office.
“We are currently experiencing a second heatwave after what was the driest July on record for parts of the country. Action is already being taken by the Government and other partners including the Environment Agency to manage the impacts,” the country’s Water Minister Steve Double said in a statement. “All water companies have reassured us that essential supplies are still safe, and we have made it clear it is their duty to maintain those supplies.”
While the lack of rain and heat are driving this drought, around 3.1 billion liters of water are lost every day in England and Wales through leaks in the nation‘s aging infrastructure. Consumer groups and experts have called on water companies to do more to plug leaks.
The Environment Agency said in its statement that the government expected water companies “to reduce leakage and fix leaking pipes as quickly as possible and take wider action alongside government policy.”
Several rivers across England have been drying up in parts, including the Thames, which runs through London. Officials have been reoxygenating rivers and rescuing fish where levels are low. Water levels in reservoirs are also rapidly dropping.
A car passes over a bridge over a dried-up river bed where the River Thames usually flows, near Kemble in Gloucestershire.
The drought declaration means water companies and governments should implement drought plans without seeking permission from ministers. Companies are likely to impose more hosepipe bans, which are already in place for millions of people, forcing them to water gardens and wash cars without hoses, and refrain from filling up paddling pools in the ongoing heat wave. Companies could also take more water out of rivers and other sources to ensure supplies.
The announcement Friday puts the declared area under an amber drought alert, meaning several indicators — including rainfall, river levels and flows, reservoir storage, and groundwater levels — are very low.
Thirteen rivers that the Environment Agency monitors as indicators of wider conditions are at their lowest levels ever recorded, while soil moisture is comparable to the end of the 1975-76 drought, one of the country’s most severe. That drought was also triggered by a combination of extreme heat and consecutive months of low rainfall.
The amber alert is one tier below the more severe red alert and means that there is likely to be stress on water supply sources, reduced agricultural and crop yields, localized wildfires, and impacts on wildlife and their habitats, according to a previous report by the Environment Agency.
The London Fire Brigade has also warned of “tinderbox dry” conditions this week and an “exceptional fire risk” across the capital as temperatures are expected to reach 36 Celsius (97 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday and as grass — from lawns to public parks and heaths — is bone dry and brown without the usual rainfall. Parts of the capital, including homes and parks, were hit by fires on July 19 during a record-breaking heat wave.
Concerns grow over food security
The UK does typically experience drought conditions every five to 10 years in some areas.
The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has said that drought conditions could continue until at least October.
The agency only looks a few months ahead, and climate scientists have warned that if this coming winter is also dry, like last winter, the UK’s food security could be at risk.
Local residents use garden hoses to assist fire crews to tackle a crop fire that swept over farmland and threatened local homes on August 11, 2022, in Skelton, England.
Liz Bentley, CEO of the Royal Meteorological Society, said that there were already concerns about the impact of drought on food supplies and affordability.
“There’s a number of crops that are really struggling due to either lack of rainfall, like the potato crop here relies on rainfall, they don’t usually take water from anywhere else to irrigate the fields. And even some of the other crops that do take water from rivers, for example, to irrigate fields, they’re really struggling at the moment,” Bentley told CNN.
“Even in current conditions, yields are going to be down for a number of crops and the price of these things are going to go up, and obviously that’s due to a drought here in the UK. But there are other things going on across Europe.”
One of Europe’s largest rivers is drying up as the continent endures a long, hot summer, which is causing serious issues for the people and businesses who depend on it.
Captain Andre Kimpel looks across the Rhine, where water levels have decreased dramatically over the past few days, with an experienced but uneasy eye.
Although several ferries in and around the town of Kaub have been rendered inoperable, he is still ferrying passengers and their vehicles to the other bank for the time being.
“It’s no joke,” he says as he navigates the water which sparkles in the summer sunshine. “We have 1.5m [5ft] of water and our boat sits 1.20m deep. So we have 30 centimeters of water left beneath us.”
It’s not unusual for water levels to drop here but, Captain Kimpel says, it’s happening more frequently. “We used to have a lot of floods. Now we have a lot of low waters.”
On the riverbank nearby, there’s an old measuring station. Any skipper wanting to enter the Upper Rhine will refer to the official water level recorded here.
The current level hasn’t yet fallen below the lowest figure ever recorded here, in October of 2018. The measurement was 25cm (the measurement is taken from the same reference point in the water, not the deepest point on the river bed).
It’s currently 42cm – but is forecast to fall further in the coming days.
Image caption,
Captain Andre Kimpel who is still carrying people across the water to the opposite bank says “We have 30 centimeters of water left beneath us”
Travel a little further upstream and the challenge is obvious.
At the town of Bingen, great swathes of the riverbed are exposed, bleached stones powder dry in the baking sun. People from the nearby town pick their way over the rocks and take photographs. In normal times they’d be underwater. One man told me he’d never seen it like this.
A few commercial vessels slowly navigate the channel of water that’s left here.
The Rhine is one of Europe’s great working rivers and industry here relies on barges to fetch and carry raw materials and finished products to and from the power plants and factories that line the riverbank.
The water’s already too low to allow some of the larger vessels through. Others have been forced to reduce their cargo, and lighten the load so that they sit higher in the water. And they’re keeping a close eye on the river levels.
It’s likely that the Upper Rhine will be closed to traffic completely, says Martina Becker from HGK shipping. Low water happens every year, she tells us, but it’s not as extreme as this.
“It’s quite extraordinary, particularly for this time of year. July and August are usually quite wet months with lots of rain and good water levels.”
“This is an unusual situation for us and the question is what happens in October when the usually dry months arrive. We are already approaching the record low level we had in 2018. We could reach that level next week.”
Experts have warned that the low water could significantly damage Germany’s economy.
Image caption,
Due to Russia reducing its gas supply to Germany, the country is relying more heavily on coal-fired power stations
And there’s an extra worry for the government. Since Russia reduced its gas supply to Germany, the ministers are relying more heavily on coal-fired power stations. But much of the coal that feeds them is transported by barge. Some of the load is being shifted to the railway network but there’s limited capacity.
There’s a far greater concern among those who live by or work on the river.
The government agency which monitors the levels says that the current low water may just be part of a normal pattern. But, they note, that such events are becoming more intense as a result of climate change and they say the situation will worsen in the second half of this century.
At Bingen, the water has fallen low enough to expose an old stone bridge that leads to a little island. People laugh as they make their way across the rocks, enjoying the novelty of being able to reach it on foot. But, for many, in this new landscape, it’s a warning.
Hong Kong has recorded its sharpest annual drop in population, with experts blaming the decline on strict Covid control measures and a political crackdown that has taken the shine off a financial hub long advertised as “Asia’s world city.”
The city’s total population fell from 7.41 million people to 7.29 million, a 1.6% decrease, the Census and Statistics Department said Thursday.
That’s the steepest decline since the government began tracking figures in 1961.
Though authorities attributed some of that to a “natural” decrease — more deaths than births — experts said the figures also reflected an exodus that has accelerated in the past few years amid periods of massive social upheaval that have included anti-government protests and the coronavirus pandemic.
Around 113,200 residents left Hong Kong over the past year, the department said, compared to 89,200 the year before. The figures include expatriates and other non-permanent residents.
Throughout the pandemic, experts and industry leaders have warned that the city’s heavy-handed Covid-19 restrictions would drive away residents, travelers, and expatriates.
Even as the rest of the world opened up, for months Hong Kong continued to close borders, suspend air routes and impose mandatory quarantines and social distancing measures such as caps on public gatherings and limits on restaurant services.
Mask mandates remain in effect, while public spaces like beaches and gyms have faced long closures during periods of high case numbers.
The measures have devastated businesses, with some of Hong Kong’s most famous sites — including the Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant — shuttering in the past year.
“More than two and a half years of Covid-19 restrictions are taking a heavy toll on businesses and the economy,” the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce said in a statement this month.
The group’s CEO, George Leung, added that Hong Kong’s border closures were “stifling any prospect of economic recovery” and urged authorities to come up with a “concrete timetable to reopen Hong Kong.”
The government has conceded the impact of its policies, saying on Thursday that flight restrictions — such as requiring all arrivals to be vaccinated, tested negative for Covid, and pay for quarantine in a hotel upon arrival — “had interrupted population inflow.”
People wearing face masks walking in Hong Kong on July 12.
This week the government eased the quarantine requirement, lowering the number of days arrivals must stay in a designated hotel from seven to three.
The government said some Hong Kongers may have chosen to settle elsewhere during the pandemic.
“Meanwhile, Hong Kong residents who had left Hong Kong before the pandemic may have chosen to reside in other places temporarily or were unable to return to Hong Kong. All these (factors) might have contributed to the net outflow of Hong Kong residents during the period,” said a government spokesperson.
But the government downplayed the population drop and seemed to suggest Hong Kong was still a bustling finance hub.
“Being an international city, Hong Kong’s population has always been mobile,” said the spokesperson. “During the past 10 years, net outflows of Hong Kong residents … were recorded for most of the years.”
The spokesperson added that the problem of Covid-driven departures “could be resolved when the quarantine and social distancing measures relaxed,” and that numbers would rise due to government efforts to attract overseas talent.
The political crackdown
Covid aside, experts say another factor behind the exodus is Beijing’s political crackdown on the city.
After Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy, anti-government protests, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law, under which the government has all but wiped out formal opposition.
Authorities have raided and closed down newsrooms, jailed activists and protesters, unseated elected lawmakers, heightened censorship both online and in printed publications, and changed school curricula.
After a decade in power, where is Xi Jinping taking China? 04:18
Since the law was introduced, many former protesters and lawmakers have fled overseas, fearing prosecution. Many individuals and families have told CNN they too are considering leaving because they feel the city has been transformed beyond recognition.
In the aftermath of the protests, a number of countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada opened new visa pathways for Hong Kongers looking to leave. Many former protesters and activists have also fled to the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan.
The security law “has swiftly and effectively restored stability and security,” the government said on July 29, adding that residents “are relieved and happy to see that Hong Kong now continues to be an open, safe, vibrant and business-friendly metropolis
Newly revealed pictures reveal two occasions on which former President Donald Trump apparently flushed documents down the toilet.
Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter, and CNN contributor are publishing the new images in her forthcoming book, “Confidence Man,” and the images were earlier posted by Axios. CNN has previously reported how Trump flouted presidential record-keeping laws and would often tear up documents, drafts, and memos after reading them.
He periodically flushed papers down the toilet in the White House residence — only to be discovered later on when repairmen were summoned to fix the clogged toilets. Trump has denied the allegations, and in a statement given to Axios on Monday, a spokesman claimed that reporting about the practice was fabricated.
In the images revealed on Monday, it’s unclear what the documents are in reference to — and who authored them — but they appear to be written in Trump’s handwriting in black marker. Haberman said one image is from a White House toilet and the other one is from an overseas trip that was provided to her by a Trump White House source.
Trump had a pattern of disregarding normal record preservation procedures. On one occasion, Trump asked if anyone wanted to put a copy of a speech he just delivered up for auction on eBay, during a mid-flight visit to the press cabin of Air Force One.
In other instances, Trump would task aides with carrying boxes of unread memos, articles, and tweet drafts aboard the presidential aircraft for him to review and then tear to shreds.
A former senior Trump administration official said a deputy from the Office of Staff Secretary would usually come in to pull things out of the trash and take them off Trump’s desk after he left a room.
A former White House official recalled that while document preservation was a key responsibility of the staff secretary, the rest of Trump’s senior staffers lacked the sense of their obligation to maintain records of papers that moved through the West Wing.
Trump’s haphazard record-keeping was the subject of a drawn-out fight earlier this year between him and the National Archives, and the Justice Department has been investigating the matter.
Since early March, occupying forces have been in control of the location, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Ukrainian technicians continue to run it, nevertheless.
Moscow has recently been accused of using the plant “as a shield” while its troops launch rockets from there towards nearby locations.
And on Thursday, more shelling was reported – and the head of the UN issued a new warning about fighting near the nuclear site “leading to disaster”.
Now two workers have told the BBC about the daily threat of kidnap, as well as their fears of either “radioactive contamination of the wider region” or a nuclear catastrophe.
The southern city of Nikopol is one of the most dangerous vantage points in Ukraine.
On the banks of the Dnipro River, it’s possible to see the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant 10 miles across the water.
It’s a place that has seen heavy shelling over the past couple of weeks, with up to 120 rockets being reported in a single night.
They come from the direction of Enerhodar, the city where the plant is situated.
In turn, Enerhodar – and the power station – have also come under heavy fire.
Another Enerhodar resident tells us that shop and pharmacy prices are now four times higher than in the territory that Ukraine still controls, as well as there is a shortage of doctors. Most ATMs are closed, too.
Svitlana has worked at the plant for many years and says shells have been landing close to it every day.
“The psychological situation is difficult,” she adds. “Soldiers are walking everywhere with weapons and everyone is actually kept at gunpoint.”
Russia is accused of basing about 500 soldiers there. Recent footage has shown military vehicles being driven inside, and Svitlana is in no doubt it’s being used as a base.
“Every day they drive back and forth in their military vehicles,” she says.
“They positioned their military equipment right at the station buildings, to make it impossible for Ukrainian armed forces to strike.”
A text comes in from Mykola: “The staff is now hostages of the Russians,” it reads.
“They turned off the internet, left only landline phones, and food is available only in one single dining room. They turned the others into their bases.”
Ukraine is concerned Russia has started shelling the area it occupies to try to create a false narrative, such as: “Ukraine is attacking you – so better vote to join Russia so we can take root and protect you.”
Moscow-installed politicians for the Zaporizhzhia region have just signed an order for a referendum to be held soon. Russia has staged sham votes in the past, such as with Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Mykola continues: “Access to all roofs is prohibited, they made their observation points there. The training building also became their barracks.
“Now, more and more often, staff are kidnapped just when leaving the shift at the security gate.”
It’s not known why the kidnapping takes place – but residents paint a picture of intimidation as Russians look to lay down law.
Svitlana and Mykola also describe
by the Russians – but they say the staff is still able to monitor the reactor properly.
Nigerian security forces say they have arrested four suspects in the attack on a Catholic church in June that killed 40 people. Authorities blamed the massacre on the militant group Islamic State West Africa Province or ISWAP.
Nigeria’s Defense Staff Chief Gen. Lucky Irabor disclosed the arrests on August 9 in Abuja during a media briefing.
He said joint security agents on August 1 arrested four terrorists who allegedly took part in the June church shooting in the town of Owo, in southwest Nigeria. The suspects, including the alleged mastermind of the attack, were arrested in Kogi State, which is close to Nigeria’s capital.
Men heavily armed with guns and explosives invaded the St. Francis Catholic Church on June 5, killing 40 worshippers and wounding 80.
Irabor also said officials have arrested a high-profile militant who escaped from an Abuja prison last month during a jailbreak, for which ISWAP claimed responsibility.
Irabor said the suspects could not be brought in front of reporters because of ongoing investigations.
“We’ve done quite a lot, and it’s my pleasure to let you know that starting with the Owo church attack, we have arrested those behind that dastardly act,” Irabor said.
The local governor in Ondo State, Rotimi Akeredolu, said authorities are continuing to search for the remaining perpetrators.
He responded to the announcement and said, “We have known for a while, but we needed not to come out with it because more work is still ongoing.”
Abuja resident Jethro Titus hailed the police for catching the suspects.
“Kudos to our security agency for being able to capture those people who killed innocent souls,” Titus said. “I think what should be done to them is … they should face the law.”
“I’m not going to follow what Irabor said. I know the country we’re in,” Olajide said. “Why were they not paraded? The fact that he’s chief of defense doesn’t mean whatever he says is the gospel truth.”
Nigeria is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency in the northeast and a wave of criminal activity, especially kidnappings for ransom, mostly in the northwest.
The number of people displaced by the record-breaking drought in Somalia has topped one million, with the United Nations warning of widespread famine if emergency needs are not soon met.
Ishaku Mshelia, the deputy emergency coordinator for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, told VOA via telephone Wednesday that people are migrating in search of food and other assistance.
He said the FAO is trying to help.
“Our ability as [a] humanitarian community is to be able to reach the affected people in their communities and provide the services that they need so that they … don’t feel pushed to migrate,” Mshelia said. “Unfortunately, previous droughts, what we have seen is that a lot of mortalities have been reported where people that, unfortunately, died on their way to open areas in search of assistance.”
A statement issued by the FAO on Wednesday said that if the funding gap is not addressed, widespread famine may be inevitable.
Drought-related malnutrition has killed 500 children, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF.
Authorities in Somalia’s Gedo region also confirmed to VOA more than 50 deaths of children due to suspected drought-related illnesses. The deaths were reported in the towns of Bardere and Beledhawo, which border Kenya.
Ali Yusuf Abdullahi, the Gedo regional administration spokesman, said that the region is witnessing a “catastrophic” situation due to drought.
He said that people are fleeing in search of a better life and have gathered in major towns including Dolow, near the Ethiopian border.
As of today, Abdullahi said, Dolow has received more than 50,000 displaced people and there are people who are coming from the Ethiopian side who were affected by the drought there and settling in IDP camps in Dolow. He said the town administrators are doing their best to provide relief, but that is not enough.
Somalia’s federal government declared the three-year drought a national emergency last year. The drought, Somalia’s worst in more than 40 years, has affected more than 7 million people.
According to the Somali prime minister‘s office, the drought has also killed more than two million livestock.
According to local reports, the attack took place at an Islamic seminary in the Afghan capital.
Sheikh Haqqani was a supporter of Afghanistan’s Taliban government and a prominent critic of the jihadist militant group Islamic State Kohrasan Province (IS-K), a regional affiliate of IS that operates in Afghanistan and opposes the Taliban’s rule.
“It’s a very huge loss for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” a senior Taliban official told Reuters news agency, adding that authorities were investigating who was behind the attack.
Despite sharing the same name, he was not related to Afghanistan’s Haqqani militant group network.
The religious leader had previously issued a fatwa, or religious decree, in support of female education – a contentious issue inside Afghanistan.
In an interview with the BBC’s Secunder Kermani earlier this year, he argued that Afghan women and girls should be able to access education: “There is no justification in the sharia [law] to say female education is not allowed. No justification at all.”
He added: “All the religious books have stated female education is permissible and obligatory, because, for example, if a woman gets sick, in an Islamic environment like Afghanistan or Pakistan, and needs treatment, it’s much better if she’s treated by a female doctor.”
In all but a handful of provinces in the country, girls’ secondary schools have been ordered to remain closed by the Taliban.
Sheikh Haqqani had previously survived two assassination attempts, most recently in 2020 when IS claimed responsibility for an explosion at a religious school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar that killed at least seven people.
According to recent satellite photographs, at least seven Russian warplanes were destroyed on Tuesday after explosions shook and claimed Crimea. According to CNN research, this may have been Moscow’s largest loss of combat aircraft in a single day since World War II.
The destroyed warplanes appear to be Su-24 bombers and Su-30 multirole fighter jets, said Peter Layton, a fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and a former Australian Air Force pilot, who examined Planet Lab satellite photos showing the Saki Air Base before and after the explosions.
Two more warplanes appear to have been damaged, Layton said. On Wednesday, the Ukrainian armed forces added nine aircraft to the tally of Russian military hardware they say has been destroyed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February.
A satellite image from August 10, after the explosion, shows the charred remains of at least seven aircraft in the earthen berms.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said it could not determine the cause of the explosions at the air base, which lies 225 kilometers (140 miles) behind the Russian front line, according to the Institute for the Study of War think tank.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said the blasts were caused by aviation ammunition — but did not say how it had been detonated.
Video on social media, verified and geolocated by CNN as being from the air base, shows smoke rising from the base before it is rocked by three large, fiery explosions that send black mushroom clouds into the sky. Two of the explosions happen almost simultaneously and a third occurs shortly thereafter.
The satellite photos also show ​the explosions burned a swath of vegetation around a portion of the air base.
‘Explosive propagation’
Layton said the satellite images point to a deliberate attack, rather than an accident, due to the presence of three large craters.
Whatever caused the craters could have caused other Russian munitions to explode, Layton said.
“If one bomb explodes, it can send high speed, very hot fragments into any adjacent bombs and detonate them. This is called explosive propagation,” Layton said. “In the image of the Russian air base, you can see three explosion sources. These set off adjacent aircraft that it seems had bombs on them. The explosion propagated.”
In the trenches: See Ukrainians holding the line against Russia 02:24
Russian munitions are not engineered to avoid such chain-reaction explosions, Layton added.
He noted that the type of destruction at the air base is reminiscent of what led to the sinking of the Russian Navy cruiser Moskva earlier in the Ukraine war.
“The Moskva also had an internal explosion when warheads in the anti-ship cruise missiles on board self-detonated,” Layton said. “This was the explosive fill burning to an explosion.
“Russian weapons are less safe than Western weapons in terms of the sensitivity of the explosive fill of the warheads. This is at least due to most weapons being old ex-Soviet stocks and so old technology,” he said.
The detonations also caused damage in a nearby town, where windows in some buildings were blown out, according to Russian state news agency TASS. Some high-rise buildings lost power, while shops and a cultural center were damaged, TASS reported.
Russian warplanes
Four helicopters and a four-engine plane appear to have left the air base in the past 24 hours, the satellite images taken before and after the attack appear to show.
Zelensky’s Crimea vow
Since 2014, the Saki Air Base has been home to a Russian naval aviation regiment, part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, according to the state-run RIA-Novosti news service.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent military forces into what was then an autonomous region of southern Ukraine with strong Russian loyalties.
Thousands of Russian-speaking troops wearing unmarked uniforms poured into the peninsula in early March that year. Two weeks later, Russia completed its annexation of Crimea in a referendum slammed by Ukraine and most of the world as illegitimate.
 Former US President Donald Trump has declined to respond to inquiries as part of a New York state investigation into the commercial dealings of his family.
Mr. Trump had sued in an effort to block the interview at the New York attorney general’s office on Wednesday.
State officials accuse the Trump Organization of misleading authorities about the value of its assets in order to get favorable loans and tax breaks.
Mr. Trump denies wrongdoing and has called the civil probe a witch hunt.
An hour after he was pictured arriving at the Manhattan office where he was questioned under oath, Mr. Trump released a statement in which he criticized New York Attorney General Letitia James and the broader investigation.
“Years of work and tens of millions of dollars have been spent on this long-simmering saga, and to no avail,” he said. “I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution.”
Ms. James’ office confirmed that the interview took place on Wednesday and that “Mr. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination”.
“Attorney General James will pursue the facts and the law wherever they may lead,” the statement added. “Our investigation continues.”
His deposition comes just days after the FBI executed an unprecedented search warrant at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, as part of a separate investigation that is reportedly linked to his handling of classified material.
While the attorney general’s investigation is a civil one, a parallel investigation is being carried out by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office which could result in criminal charges.
Legal analysts suggest Mr. Trump may have declined to answer questions on Wednesday because his answers could have been used against him in that criminal investigation. The former president invoked the Fifth Amendment, which protects people from being compelled to be a witness against themselves in a criminal case.
Trump on people pleading the Fifth Amendment: ‘Disgraceful’
The questioning lasted around four hours and included lengthy breaks, his lawyer Ronald Fischetti told US media.
Mr. Trump began by reading a statement into the record condemning the attorney general and her investigation and invoking his Fifth Amendment rights.
He proceeded to say “same answer” to every question he was asked.
Once the investigation concludes, the state attorney general could decide to bring a lawsuit seeking financial penalties against Mr Trump or his company.
Ms. James had sought Mr. Trump’s deposition – and that of two of his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr – for more than six months while the family resisted subpoenas through the New York court system.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump had also attempted to sue Ms. James in a bid to prevent her from questioning the former president and his children.
But in February, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that all three must sit for depositions. Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr were questioned earlier this month.
The judge said the investigation had uncovered “copious evidence of possible financial fraud” giving the attorney general a “clear right” to question under oath the former president and two of his children involved in the business.
Ms. James hailed the judge’s decision as a victory, saying that “justice has prevailed”.
The investigation, which was first opened in 2019, seeks to prove that Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization misrepresented the value of assets in order to obtain favorable loans and tax breaks. The alleged fraud is said to have occurred before Mr. Trump took office.
“The mob takes the Fifth,” Donald Trump said at an Iowa campaign rally in 2016.
His target? You’ve guessed it – Hillary Clinton. Some of her former staffers had exercised their right to silence during a congressional inquiry.
The boot is now on the other foot, as they say.
“I once asked,” said his statement on Wednesday – published while his deposition by the New York attorney general was still ongoing – “If you’re innocent why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
“Now I know the answer to that question,” he concluded, suggesting that he had been left with no choice.
While his allies have been demanding answers from officials over the unprecedented action, he could choose to provide some himself. That’s because he’ll have a copy of the warrant and the inventory of material removed from his property.
Yet his public statements suggest he’s been left in the dark, and he has repeatedly attacked the process.
His supporters may believe the narrative that he is being persecuted. But – as Trump once did – others may see his refusal to answer questions as a sign of substance to the case against him.
On Thursday, North Korea’s media reported that North Korean President Kim Jong Un has declared victory in the battle against the novel coronavirus, ordering a lifting of maximum anti-epidemic measures imposed in May.
North Korea has not revealed how many confirmed infections of the virus it has found, but since July 29 it has reported no new suspected cases with what international aid organizations say are limited testing capabilities.
While lifting the maximum anti-pandemic measures, Kim said that North Korea must maintain a “steel-strong anti-epidemic barrier and intensify the anti-epidemic work until the end of the global health crisis,” according to a report by the state news agency KCNA.
Analysts said that although the authoritarian North has used the pandemic to tighten social controls, its victory declaration could be a prelude to restoring trade hampered by border lockdowns and other restrictions.
Kim Yo Jong blamed leaflets from South Korea for causing North Korea’s Covid outbreak.
North Korea’s official death rate of 74 people is an “unprecedented miracle” compared to other countries, KCNA reported, citing another official.
Instead of confirmed cases, North Korea reported a number of people with fever symptoms. Those daily cases peaked at more than 392,000 on May 15, prompting health experts to warn of an inevitable crisis.
The World Health Organization has cast doubts on North Korea’s claims, saying last month it believed the situation was getting worse, not better, amid an absence of independent data.
Pyongyang’s declaration of victory comes despite rolling out no known vaccine program. Instead, the country says it relied on lockdowns, homegrown medicine treatments, and what Kim called the “advantageous Korean-style socialist system.”
Is North Korea hiding a bigger problem behind its Covid-19 outbreak?
The North has said it was running intensive medical checks nationwide, with daily PCR tests on water collected in borderline areas among the measures.
Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, said the North Korean leader himself had suffered from fever symptoms, and blamed leaflets from South Korea for causing the outbreak, KCNA reported.
“Even though he was seriously ill with a high fever, he could not lie down for a moment thinking about the people he had to take care of until the end in the face of the anti-epidemic war,” she said in a speech praising his efforts.
On Thursday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in a statement it had “strong regrets” over North Korea “repeatedly making groundless claims” about how Covid-19 had arrived in the country.
A Brazilian judge has rejected the defense’s claims of diplomatic immunity and ordered that German Consul Uwe Herbert Hahn be remanded in custody in connection with the alleged murder of his husband in Rio de Janeiro according to CNN.
Rio police first took Hahn into custody on Saturday after his husband, Walter Henri Maximilien Biot, 52, was found dead in an apartment in the Ipanema neighborhood, police said. The video showed Hahn being escorted by Brazilian police outside a police station in Rio on Sunday.
Brazilian judge Rafael de Almeida Rezende cited alleged attempts to tamper with evidence among the factors in his decision to keep the diplomat in custody.
According to the decision, obtained by CNN, “the apartment was cleaned before the forensics team carried out its examination, a fact that by itself demonstrates that the release of the suspect in custody could lead to serious encumbrances to the collection of evidence.”
The judge’s order describes the crime scene and states “several lesions on the victim’s body originating from blunt-force trauma, with one of the [lesions] compatible with a foot stomp and the other with the deployment of a cylindrical instrument (supposedly a wooden club).”
The judge’s ruling also said that forensics “detected blood splatter on the property, markedly in the couple’s bedroom and in the bathroom, compatible with the dynamics of a violent death.”
Hahn’s defense argued to the court that the diplomat is entitled to diplomatic immunity, and a writ of habeas corpus, reports CNN Brasil.
Habeas corpus is a legal principle that allows people who believe they are being held unlawfully in prison or detention to challenge it, and successful challenges can lead to a detainee’s release.
But the judge ruled that “an arrest due to an intentional crime against life, committed inside the couple’s apartment (so outside of the consular environment) has no relation whatsoever to consular duties.”
Video released to CNN Brasil shows Hahn explaining to police chief Camila Lourenço that Biot had shown signs of panicking, acting nervously or “strange” in the days leading up to his death.
In the videotaped police interview, Hahn described how the couple was sitting on the sofa when Biot stood up suddenly and ran toward the balcony before falling face down on the floor.
He tells the chief that he thinks his husband slipped.
“It was very fast,” he said as he walks around the apartment the couple shared.
Hahn said he initially thought Biot was drunk and took a photo of his husband, which he sent to a friend along with the message, “Walter is drunk again.”
Hahn said he then tried to pick Biot up to take him to bed when he noticed his husband was bleeding.
CNN has reached out to Hahn’s lawyers but they were unavailable for comment.
German Foreign Office sources also confirmed to CNN the “arrest of an employee posted to the Consulate General in Rio de Janeiro.”
“Our Embassy in Brasilia and the Consulate General in Rio de Janeiro are in close contact with the Brazilian authorities investigating this case,” the foreign office sources said, adding that due to the ongoing investigations and for personal privacy reasons, they could not disclose additional information.
On Monday family of acclaimed novelist and filmmaker, Biyi Bandele announced the death of the novelist in a Facebook post.
Bandele, 54, is described as a prolific author, playwright, and filmmaker whose work includes the adaptation of famed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton.
In a statement signed by his daughter Temi Bandele, she revealed that her father died in Lagos-Nigeria.
She wrote, “I am heartbroken to share the sudden and unexpected death on Sunday 7th of August in Lagos of my father Biyi Bandele.”
“Biyi was a prodigiously talented writer and filmmaker, as well as a loyal friend and beloved father. He was a storyteller to his bones, with an unblinking perspective, singular voice, and wisdom that spoke boldly through all of his art, in poetry, novels, plays, and on screen. “
“He told stories which made a profound impact and inspired many all over the world. His legacy will live on through his work,” she wrote in the post.
Bandele was considered one of the finest filmmakers and storytellers of his generation.
In an interview with CNN in 2014, he said, “I knew I wanted to be a writer from when I was six. My dad took me to the local library. I was five or six, and I just fell in love with the books.”
Bandele grew up in the small northwestern Nigerian town of Kafanchan, Kaduna State, and left Nigeria at 22 after studying drama at Obafemi Awolowo University.
“I actually came [to London] because I’d been invited to a theater festival … within weeks, I had a publisher, not just in the UK but in Italy and in France and in Germany,” he told CNN.
“Then I got offered a job to be the literary editor of a weekly Nigerian newspaper in London so I had actually come with absolutely no intention of staying.”
Shortly after his arrival in the UK, his work was published and he received his first commission from the Royal Court Theatre where he was catapulted into the arts.
Three years later, Bandele wrote a screenplay that was picked up by the BBC, which attached a young up-and-coming director to it. His name was Danny Boyle.
“Working with Danny was a game changer. I wasn’t that interested at the time in actually directing anything but I watched Danny … it was a joy working with him,” he said.
Mo Abudu, founder of Ebony Life Studios and one of his long-time collaborators told CNN they were preparing to debut their new film, Elesin Oba (The King’s Horsemen) at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September.
“He was so passionate about Elesin Oba, more so than any of the other projects he had worked on with us… and was so excited when he heard about our selection at TIFF. I am sad he will not be at TIFF and that he will not get to see how loved his last project was.”
Bandele also co-directed the Netflix hit Blood Sisters. The streaming platform paid tribute to him in a Twitter post calling his passing “a monumental loss to Nigeria’s film and creative industry.”
“Biyi Bandele’s passing is a monumental loss to Nigeria’s film and creative industry. He will be remembered as a powerhouse who made some of the finest films out of Africa. As we mourn him, we commiserate with his family, friends, and colleagues. May he rest in power.”
Seven years after its debut in the country, the American pizza giant has formally shut its stores after it failed to win over locals who preferred homegrown options, according to a report by Milano Today.
EPizza SpA, the franchise operator of the Domino’s brand in Italy, filed for bankruptcy in April, after it struggled to make enough sales during two years of pandemic restrictions, according to a document filed in a Milan court.
The last of Domino’s 29 branches have closed in Italy after the company started operations in the country seven years ago. (Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg via Getty)
The company stopped activity in all its Domino’s stores on July 20, according to a report by Food Service, an Italian food industry publication.
Although some may attribute Domino’s failure to its brazen attempt to infiltrate pizza‘s homeland with American fare, ePizza said it went bust because of competition from food delivery apps.
In response to the inflation crisis, the German Finance Ministry has unveiled a plan to reduce income taxes. However, critics claim the measures would benefit top earners the most, and squeeze public spending.  Â
The price of food, as well as energy, has increased with inflation hitting its highest in decades
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner on Wednesday announced measures to raise tax thresholds and increase child benefits slightly.
The plans are intended to help ease the burden of rising inflation for households, amid rising food and energy prices.
The Finance Ministry is set to raise the tax-free allowance from €10,347 (roughly $10,550) currently to €10,632 next year and €10,932 in 2024. People start paying income tax on earnings after this figure.
The top tax rate, which currently kicks in from €58,597 at present will increase to €61,972 next year and from €63,515 in 2023.
Meanwhile, child benefit payments for the first two children are set to rise by €8 to €227 per month, along with other increases for families with more than two children.
As a result, the Finance Ministry expects tax revenue to drop by €10.12 billion next year, and by €17.5 billion in 202
Politicians from fellow junior coalition partners the Greens have attacked the plans as regressive, saying they provide the greatest advantage to the already wealthy.
“Billions in tax relief from which high earners benefit three times as much in absolute terms than those with lower incomes — that is not in keeping with the times,” Katharina Beck, the Green Party spokeswoman on financial affairs, told the RND newsgroup.
“The opposite would be the right thing. Strong shoulders should have to bear more than those on a low income and should not be disproportionately relieved. These really hard times especially affect those who have little money.”
There was also criticism from Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey, of Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats — the leading coalition partner — who said more targeted relief was needed. She told the Welt news channel that tax cuts and across-the-board child benefit increases would not help those most in need.
“Another child benefit increase is nice for those who get it. But again, it doesn’t help pensioners, and it doesn’t help students either.”
Weak euro Good news for who?
Lindner defends measures
Speaking in response to the criticism, Lindner said that, in all, some 48 million would benefit from the tax changes.
He said the changes were aimed at relieving the pressure on people whose income was pushed into taxation at higher rates as salaries rise because of inflation. This, combined with higher living costs, would effectively push down their spending power — a phenomenon known as “cold progression.”
The measures would provide relief to those taxpayers with an annual income below €62,000, Lindner said.
“This is not about a relief, but about removing a burden,” Lindner said. The minister said he was also in favor of “strong shoulders bearing more than narrow shoulders.”
However, he said, the cold progression would also “burden people whose shoulders have not become broader at all.”
Left Party urges spending, not cuts
The chairman of the socialist Left Party, Martin Schirdewan, said the plan would squeeze public spending at the expense of ordinary people.
“Because Lindner refuses to give the rich and crisis profiteers a greater part in financing the costs of the crisis — and at the same time sticks to the debt brake, or better put, the investment brake — predictably money will be lacking for necessary social spending and investments,” Schirdewan told the AFP news agency.
“Those who unilaterally cut taxes also dry up the state budget and create a pressure to save money, usually at the expense of the general public and urgent public tasks.”
After animal rescue organizations began rescuing them from a Virginia facility where they were being raised to be sold to scientists for drug trials, over 4,000 beagles are now looking for homes.
“It’s going to take 60 days to get all of these animals out, and working with our shelter and rescue partners across the country, working with them to get these dogs into eventually into an ever-loving home,” said Kitty Block, president, and chief executive of the US Humane Society.
Shelters from South Elgin, Illinois to Pittsburgh have begun receiving the dogs, which will get medical exams, vaccinations, and other treatments before becoming available for adoption.
4,000 beagles will be rescued from a Virginia breeding facility In May, the US Department of Justice sued Envigo RMS LLC alleging Animal Welfare Act violations at the facility in Cumberland, Virginia. In June, parent company Inotiv Inc. said it would close the facility. In July, Envigo settled with the government, without paying any fines.
Inotiv did not respond to a request for comment.
Government inspectors found beagles there were being killed instead of receiving care for easily treated conditions; nursing mother beagles were denied food; the food they received contained maggots, mold, and feces; and over an eight-week period, 25 beagle puppies died from cold exposure, the Humane Society said in a statement. Some were injured when attacked by other dogs in overcrowded conditions, it added.
The beagle rescue effort began much earlier, according to Bill Stanley, a Republican state senator for Virginia. “I tried to shut them down in 2019 but was not successful. But over the years, we never stopped fighting.”
On Tuesday, firefighters finally overcame what officials described as the worst fire in Cuba‘s history that over five days destroyed 40% of the Caribbean island’s main fuel storage facility and resulted in massive blackouts.
Reuters witnesses reported the raging flames that ravaged a four-tank segment of the Matanzas supertanker port had died down and the towering plumes of thick black smoke streaming from the area were diminished and now mostly gray.
Matanzas is Cuba’s largest port for receiving crude oil and fuel imports. Cuban heavy crude, as well as fuel oil and diesel stored in Matanzas in 10 huge tanks, are mainly used to generate electricity on the island.
Firefighters on Tuesday finally overcame what officials described as the worst fire in Cuba’s history that over five days destroyed 40% of the Caribbean island’s main fuel storage facility and caused massive blackouts.
Reuters witnesses reported the raging flames that ravaged a four-tank segment of the Matanzas supertanker port had died down and the towering plumes of thick black smoke streaming from the area were diminished and now mostly gray.
Matanzas is Cuba’s largest port for receiving crude oil and fuel imports. Cuban heavy crude, as well as fuel oil and diesel stored in Matanzas in 10 huge tanks, are mainly used to generate electricity on the island.
Mexican and Cuban firefighters work to put out the fire at the fuel depot that was sparked by a lightning strike.
Lightning struck one fuel storage tank on Friday evening. The fire spread for a second by Sunday and engulfed the four-tank area on Monday, accompanied by huge explosions and despite efforts by local firefighters supported by more than 100 Mexican and Venezuelan reinforcements.
Firefighter Rafael Perez Garriga told Reuters on the steaming outskirts of the disaster that he worries the fire would impact the power situation in the country.
“The situation is going to be more difficult. If the thermoelectric plants are supplied with that oil, we are going to have the whole world affected, it is electricity and it affects everything,” he said.
A man fishes as smoke rises from the massive fire at a fuel depot in Matanzas, Cuba, on August 9, 2022.
The Communist-run country, under heavy US sanctions, is all but bankrupt. Frequent blackouts and shortages of gasoline and other commodities already had created a tense situation with scattered local protests following last summer’s historic unrest in July.
On Tuesday, more helicopters joined the effort to put out the fire, along with two fireboats sent by Mexico along with heavy firefighting equipment.
“We have not yet been able to access the impact area due to the conditions. There is combustion and so we cannot risk our lives for now,” Perez said around noon.
Smoke rises from a deadly fire at a large oil storage facility in Matanzas, Cuba on August 9.
Later in the day firefighters for the first time were entering the area and spraying foam and water on the still smoldering remains.
“Today we have managed to control the fire,” Rolando Vecino, head of transport for the Ministry of the Interior, said on state-run television from the scene.
Officials have not said how much fuel has been lost in the fire which destroyed all four tanks. Authorities stated that no oil had contaminated the nearby
Matanzas Bay. Still, they warned residents as far away as Havana to wear face masks and avoid acid rain due to the massive plume of smoke the fire generated.
A firefighter helicopter drops water on a massive fire at a fuel depot in Matanzas, Cuba, on August 8.
One firefighter died and 14 went missing on Saturday when the second tank blew up, authorities said on Tuesday, correcting an earlier figure of 16 missings. Five others remain in critical condition.
Mario Sabines, governor of the Matanzas province, about 60 miles (130 km) from Havana, quipped the flames spread like an “Olympic torch” from one tank to the next, turning each into a “caldron.”
A targeted inactivated polio vaccine booster dose should be given to all kids in all London boroughs between the ages of 1 and 9, according to the UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization.
“This will ensure a high level of protection from paralysis and help reduce further spread of the virus,” the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said in a statement announcing the move.
Around 1 million children of that age live in the London region, according to the most recent data from the UK Office for National Statistics.
The UKHSA said a total of 116 virus isolates were identified in 19 sewage samples collected in London between February and July.
While most of the samples contained a vaccine-like virus, some showed “sufficient mutations to be classified as vaccine-derived poliovirus.” The UKHSA said this was more concerning as such virus behaves more similarly to “wild polio and may, on rare occasions, lead to cases of paralysis in unvaccinated individuals.”
“No cases of polio have been reported and for the majority of the population, who are fully vaccinated, the risk is low. But we know the areas in London where the poliovirus is being transmitted have some of the lowest vaccination rates,” Dr. Vanessa Saliba, a consultant epidemiologist at UKHSA said.
Vaccines are key as there’s no cure for polio
Polio is caused by an enterovirus called the poliovirus. It was one of the world’s most feared diseases until Dr. Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine and tested its safety in 1954.
By 1988, reported cases of polio worldwide reached a peak of 350,000, according to the World Health Organization.
About 1 in 4 infected people have flu-like symptoms including sore throat, fever, tiredness, nausea, headache, and stomach pain. As many as 1 in 200 will develop more serious symptoms that include tingling and numbness in the legs, an infection of the brain or spinal cord, and paralysis, according to the US
However, any paralysis caused by polio is permanent.
New York adult diagnosed with polio, first US case in nearly a decade
The last case of polio in the UK was in 1984, according to the UKHSA statement.
“Decades ago before we introduced the polio vaccination program around 8,000 people would develop paralysis every year,” Saliba added.
There are three strains of the virus, two of which have been eliminated in the world, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a WHO program. One type of wild poliovirus still circulates in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Transmission can also occur when not enough children are vaccinated in an area.
Last month, a person from Rockland County, New York, was been diagnosed with polio, the first case identified in the United States in nearly a decade. The unvaccinated young adult began experiencing weakness and paralysis, county Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert said at the time.
The actor became suspicious after a surveillance footage led them to suspect the actor, who stars in films including the Fantastic Beasts franchise.
Miller is separately facing charges of assault in Hawaii and allegations of abuse from several women.
Vermont State Police said there was no one at home when the house was broken into.
“As a result of an investigation that included surveillance videos and statements, probable cause was found to charge Ezra M Miller with the offense of felony burglary into an unoccupied dwelling,” police said in a statement on Monday.
The Justice League actor was ordered to appear in court to face the charge on 26 September.
The alleged burglary is the latest in a string of incidents involving the 29-year-old actor.
Just two weeks earlier, Miller was charged with harassment and disorderly conduct at a karaoke bar in Hawaii.
According to police, the actor grabbed a microphone from a woman singing and lunged at a man playing darts after becoming aggravated by a rendition of Shallow from the film A Star Is Born.
Miller, who uses “they” and “them” as personal pronouns, is known for their roles in Perks of Being a Wallflower, Trainwreck, and the hugely successful Fantastic Beasts franchise.
They are due to star as Flash in DC’s upcoming film The Flash, set to be released next year.
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