It was a busy Friday night at a barbecue restaurant in the Chinese city of Tangshan. A group of women were having dinner together when one of them was approached by a male diner.Recoiling from his touch, she said "go away".
A powerful earthquake struck a remote border region of Afghanistan overnight killing at least 1,000 people and injuring 1,500 more, officials said Wednesday, with the toll expected to rise as desperate rescuers dig through collapsed dwellings.The 5.9-magnitude quake struck hardest in the rugged east, where people already lead hardscrabble lives in the grip of a humanitarian crisis made worse since the Taliban takeover in August."People are digging grave after grave," said Mohammad A
A fisher in Cambodia has caught what scientists say is the world’s largest recorded freshwater fish, a giant stingray.Captured on 13 June, the stingray measured almost four metres (13 feet) from snout to tail and weighed slightly less than 300kg (660lbs), according to a statement on Monday by Wonders of the Mekong, a joint Cambodian-United States (US) research project.
"There was water everywhere, but not a single drop to drink." That is how Ronju Chowdhary described the scene outside her house on Saturday. She lives in Udiana, a remote village in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, which has been hit by severe floods.It had been raining incessantly, she remembers. The water rose so quickly that the streets were completely submerged within hours.
The world risks creating a “lost generation” of children in Myanmar unless it takes immediate steps to protect them from the violence perpetrated by the military since it seized power in February 2021, a United Nations (UN) human rights expert has said.“The junta’s relentless attacks on children underscore the generals’ depravity and willingness to inflict immense suffering on innocent victims in its attempt to subjugate the people of Myanmar,” Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the situat
Thousands of Singaporeans dressed in pink gathered at a park Saturday calling for greater recognition of LGBTQ rights, the first such rally since 2019 after coronavirus restrictions were eased.While the city-state is prosperous and developed, social attitudes remain conservative and sex between men is still illegal, although the statute is not actively enforced.Singapore's "Pink Dot" gay rights rally started in 2009 and has regularly attracted sizeable crowds despite a backlash
Monsoon storms in Bangladesh and India have killed at least 59 people and unleashed devastating floods that left millions of others stranded, officials said Saturday.Floods are a regular menace to millions of people in low-lying Bangladesh, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency, ferocity and unpredictability.Relentless downpours over the past week have inundated vast stretches of Bangladesh's northeast, with troops deployed to evacuate households cut off from neigh
Climate talks in Bonn headed into their final day with rich nations accused of betraying the developing world.Poorer countries say that a promise they would be compensated for the damage done by richer countries' emissions would be honoured this year.They believed that new money to pay for the impacts of climate change that they can't adapt to would be set up.But in the discussions in Bonn, they say the issue has been side-lined by the United States (US) and Europe.For many particip
More frequent and intense heatwaves are the deadliest form of extreme weather made worse by global warming, with death tolls sometimes in the thousands, but they can also have devastating economic impacts too, experts say.The prolonged and unseasonable scorchers gripping the central United States (US) and rolling northward across western Europe, sending the thermometer above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), are likely to cause both.Deadly And CostlyVery high temperatures caused ne
People with disabilities are being “systematically ignored” by governments around the world when it comes to the climate crisis, even though they are particularly at risk from the impacts of extreme weather, research has shown.Few countries make provisions for the needs of people with disabilities when they make plans for adapting to the effects of climate breakdown, and none mention disabled people in their programmes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to the first comprehen
About three weeks after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Indonesian housewife Liesye Setiana was forced to close her banana chip business as cooking oil supplies dried up across the country.Millions of consumers and small business owners in the world's fourth most populous nation have been rattled for months by skyrocketing cooking oil prices.As the war between the two major grain and sunflower seed producers sent jitters through global markets, many producers rushed to shift their goods
People in Thailand can now grow cannabis plants at home and sell the crop after the nation removed marijuana from its banned narcotics list.The nation is the first to advance such a move in Southeast Asia, a region known for its stringent drug laws.But recreational use is still banned, even though advocates say the easing effectively decriminalises marijuana.The government is hoping that developing a local cannabis trade will boost agriculture and tourism.It's even giving away one millio
