International

US, Britain forge pact to counter new threats

By Jitendra JOSHI Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States — The United States and Britain on Thursday announced a new strategic pact as their leaders rededicated the “special relationship” to counter Russia, China and economic instability. In a White House summit, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak presented a united front on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the lightning-fast evolution of artificial intelligence. But Sunak came away empty-handed on Britain’s ambitions for […]

Continue Reading →

World warming at record 0.2C per decade, scientists warn

PARIS, June 8, 2023 (AFP) – Record-high greenhouse gas emissions and diminishing air pollution have caused an unparalleled acceleration in global warming, 50 top scientists warned Thursday in a sweeping climate science update. From 2013 to 2022, “human-induced warming has been increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade,” they reported in a peer-reviewed study aimed at policymakers. Average annual emissions over the same period hit an all-time high of 54 […]

Continue Reading →

Philippines on alert as volcano spews ash

MANILA, June 8, 2023 (AFP) – Philippine scientists said that a “hazardous eruption” of a volcano in the archipelago could be days or weeks away, and urged the evacuation of nearby residents from their homes. Hundreds of families living around Mount Mayon in central Albay province are expected to be moved to safer areas after the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised the alarm. Mayon, a near-perfect cone located about 330 kilometres (205 miles) […]

Continue Reading →

Hawaii volcano erupts again

LOS ANGELES, June 7, 2023 (AFP) – One of the world’s most active volcanoes has erupted again, with lava spewing from Kilauea in Hawaii on Wednesday. Footage showed fissures have opened up at the base of a crater on the volcano, which regularly springs to life, with vulcanologists calling the eruption “dynamic.” Scientists at the United States Geological Survey said they began detecting activity early on Wednesday morning, all well within the confines of the […]

Continue Reading →

Priests in Bolivia ‘saints by day, demons by night’: alleged victim

  By José Arturo Cárdenas Agence France-Presse LA PAZ, Bolivia (AFP) — A Bolivian former seminarian who says he was the victim of a vast sex abuse network in the Catholic Church has told AFP of decades of “hell” meted out to children by men of the cloth. Pedro Lima said not only minors but also adults like himself who were training to become priests were subject to abuse in the South American country, often […]

Continue Reading →

Zelensky ‘in shock’ over lack of aid for dam disaster

BERLIN, Germany (AF)) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday expressed dismay at a lack of help from the UN and Red Cross with the fallout from the destruction of the Russian-occupied Kakhovka dam. “They are not there,” Zelensky said in English in an interview with Germany’s Bild daily, adding that he was “in shock because I think they are the forces who have to be there to save people’s lives”. The destruction of the […]

Continue Reading →

US haze from Canada fires rare and extreme event: expert

By Lucie AUBOURG Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The air pollution swamping the northeast United States this week from smoke spewed by fires in Canada is “exceptionally rare” and “extreme”, said Ryan Stauffer, a NASA scientist specializing in air pollution. This episode should last for at least the next two days, the expert told AFP on Wednesday. How out of the ordinary is this event? “In the last 20 or 25 years, the […]

Continue Reading →

Brazil state approves ‘Vini Jr’s law’ against football racism

BRASÍLIA, June 7, 2023 (AFP) — Legislators in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro approved a law on Tuesday to curtail football matches affected by racist abuse, after a wave of disgust over the treatment of Vinicius Junior. The Real Madrid star, a native of the state, has been targeted multiple times by terrace racists over the past two years in Spain. State deputy Prof. Josemar, who drafted the legislation, said the winger’s treatment […]

Continue Reading →

Millions of Chinese students sit grueling college entrance exams

BEIJING, China, June 7, 2023 (AFP) — Millions of Chinese students sit for notoriously tough college entrance exams on Wednesday, the first since the country lifted zero-Covid rules that forced classes online for months on end. China’s education ministry says nearly 13 million students, a record, are registered to take the “gaokao” exams — billed by state media as the “world’s toughest” — this year. “I’ve been waking up at 4 am every day, except […]

Continue Reading →

2 dead, 5 injured in US school graduation shooting

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2023 (AFP) — Two people were killed and five injured Tuesday during a shooting near a high school graduation in the US state of Virginia, police said, the latest in an epidemic of mass shootings plaguing the country. The shooting took place around 5 pm (2100 GMT) outside a theater in the state capital of Richmond, where students from a local high school were celebrating their graduation, Richmond interim police chief Rick […]

Continue Reading →

10 billion global population ‘unsustainable’: US climate envoy Kerry

OSLO, Norway, June 7, 2023 (AFP) — US special climate envoy John Kerry told AFP that the world’s population will not be tenable in 2050, when it is projected to hit nearly 10 billion, but refrained from asking Americans to give up steaks. Since November, the global population has officially crossed eight billion, more than three times the figure in 1950. This has already stretched food and energy needs and supplies. UN projections say the […]

Continue Reading →

Quebec the new epicenter of Canada’s raging wildfires

MONTREAL, Canada (AFP) — Canada’s Quebec province, not used to the huge number, scale and strength of wildfires ravaging the rest of the country, has become the latest hotspot with about 160 fires burning on Tuesday, most of those out of control. In the hardest-hit Abitibi-Temiscamingue region of the province, more than 650 kilometers (400 miles) north of Montreal, fires that have disrupted mining and forestry operations are “worrying,” said Quebec Premier François Legault. “We […]

Continue Reading →
1 … 285 286 287 288 289 … 2,486