“This is like a nightmare”: Thousands displaced as floods hit Bangladesh Rohingya camps
Reuters Heavy monsoon rains triggered landslides and flash floods in refugees camps displacing thousands of Rohingya Muslims in southeastern Bangladesh this week, UN and other officials said on Friday, with further heavy rainfall expected. At least six Rohingya, including three children, died in landslides and flooding while 15 Bangladeshis were killed and more than 200,000 […]
Japan to expand state of emergency as COVID-19 shadows Olympics
Tokyo, JapanReuters Japan’s government on Friday proposed states of emergency through to 31st August in three prefectures near Olympic host Tokyo and the western prefecture of Osaka, as COVID-19 cases spike to records, overshadowing the Summer Games. Existing states of emergency for Tokyo – its fourth since the pandemic began – and southern Okinawa island […]
Snapshot: Andorra
See DIYA B’s image…
Soundbite – The TCM Update: Switchfoot’s ‘Interrobang’…
Switchfoot: PICTURE: Erik Frost Listen to this week’s TCM Update…
International Space Station thrown out of control by misfire of Russian module – NASA
Reuters The International Space Station was thrown briefly out of control on Thursday when jet thrusters of a newly arrived Russian research module inadvertently fired a few hours after it was docked to the orbiting outpost, NASA officials said. The seven crew members aboard – two Russian cosmonauts, three NASA astronauts, a Japanese astronaut and […]
EU urges Cuba to free “arbitrarily detained” protesters
Havana, CubaReuters The European Union is “very concerned about the repression” of protests in Cuba and urges the government to release all arbitrarily detained protesters, the EU said on Thursday in its strongest statement to date on the matter. Summary trials have begun for those detained in unprecedented protests nationwide over shortages, power outages and a […]
“Like back in Syria”: migrant volunteers clear up flood-hit Germany
Ahrweiler, GermanyReuters Syrian volunteers have rushed to towns hit by Germany’s most devastating floods in 60 years to clean them up and renovate homes, drawing on their experience with catastrophes in their homeland to help the country that took them in. Germany, which lost at least 180 lives in the flooding earlier this month, opened […]
Digital divide: Venezuelans face risk of being cut out of new life in Colombia
ANASTASIA MOLONEY, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on a how a lack of access to technology is affecting Venezuelans who are trying to start a new life in Colombia…
Eritrean refugees in Ethiopian capital protest insecurity at Tigray camps
Addis Ababa, EthiopiaReuters Hundreds of Eritrean refugees protested in the Ethiopian capital on Thursday, calling on the United Nations refugee agency to relocate friends and family who they say are trapped in two refugee camps by fighting in the Tigray region. Clashes between armed groups have escalated in and around the camps – Mai Aini […]
Essay: How a perfect storm of events is turning Myanmar into a ‘super-spreader’ COVID state
Australian academics ADAM SIMPSON and NICHOLAS FARRELLY, in an article first published on The Conversation, look at the factors behind the worsening COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar…