Mediterranean migrant deaths: EU holds urgent talks
- 45 minutes ago
- Europe
EU foreign and interior ministers are due to meet in Luxembourg to discuss the deaths of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean from Africa.
Some southern European nations say the EU's credibility is now at stake after last year's decision to scale back search and rescue efforts.
On Sunday, hundreds are believed to have drowned after their boat sank off the coast of Libya.
The UN says the North Africa-Italy route has become the world's deadliest.
The 20m (70ft) long boat was believed to be carrying up to 700 migrants, and only 28 survivors have been rescued.
A boat carrying coffins of the 24 victims found so far has just arrived in Malta, the Italian Coastguard says.
Australian terror plot: UK police arrest 14-year-old boy in Blackburn
Teenager, who was first held on 2 April, is re-arrested on suspicion of preparing ‘credible terrorist threat’ linked to alleged plot in Australia
A 14-year-old boy from Lancashire has been arrested on suspicion of preparing a “credible terrorist threat” linked to another alleged plot in Australia uncovered over the weekend.
The teenager from Blackburn was first arrested on 2 April following “the examination of a number of electronic devices”, according to Greater Manchester police.
He was rearrested on Saturday after officers from the north-west counter-terrorism unit (NWCTU) and officers from Lancashire Constabulary executed a warrant at an address in Blackburn.
He is now being interviewed on suspicion of preparing for an act of terrorism under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006.
Armenian genocide: To continue to deny the truth of this mass human cruelty is close to a criminal lie
I dug the bones and skulls of massacred Armenians out of the Syrian desert with my own hands in 1992
When São Paulo’s water ran out
Deforestation in Amazonia in the service of agribusiness has depleted the rainfall in southernmost Latin America and now the powerhouse city of São Paulo is in severe drought.
by Anne Vigna
The wine waiter in a smart restaurant in São Paulo, Brazil’s economic powerhouse, holds up a bottle for his customers. He handles it as lovingly as a baby, then pours the wine into plastic cups. The pipes under the washbasins in the spotless toilets have been removed, so the water collects in bowls beneath and a notice asks customers to “please use this water to flush the toilets”. In the past few months this city of superlatives (the richest, most densely populated, with the most cars) has seen many such oddities. São Paulo has enjoyed the fastest economic growth of the past decade but now has a very severe water shortage.
São Paulo State (population 41 million) has been governed by the conservative Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) for the past 21 years. Water supplies were already very low last year and in October, when the issue was raised during the final televised debate before the gubernatorial election, Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB) replied that “there is not, and will not be, a water shortage in São Paolo.” He won the election. His quote is replayed endlessly on social media.
China’s President Heads to Pakistan With Billions in Infrastructure Aid
BEIJING — China’s president, Xi Jinping, travels to Pakistan on Monday laden with tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure and energy assistance on a scale the United States has never offered in the past decade of a close relationship, a gesture likely to confirm the decline of American influence in that nation.
Mr. Xi, making his first overseas trip this year, and the first by a Chinese leader to Pakistan in nine years, will arrive fortified from the robust reception to the new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and is looking to show that China can make a difference in a friendly, neighboring country troubled by terrorism.
Pakistani officials say that Mr. Xi will be signing accords for $46 billion for the construction of roads, rails and power plants to be built on a commercial basis by CHINESE COMPANIES
over 15 years.
over 15 years.Why India's cotton farmers are killing themselves
Updated 0938 GMT (1638 HKT) April 20, 2015
Yogita Kanhaiya is expecting a baby soon. She already has a two-year-old son.
Her husband, Moreshwor, a cotton farmer, won't be around to see his children grown up. He committed suicide early in the pregnancy. Eight years back, Yogita's father-in-law, also a cotton farmer, took his own life.
"He was in so much debt," 25-year-old Yogita said of her late husband. "He wasn't getting any money from cotton. He chose death over distress."
It's a familiar story in families across Western India's cotton production belt, where, a cotton lobbyist group claims, one cotton farmer commits suicide every eight hours.
"We get reports of two to three farmer suicides every day," said Kishor Tiwari, leader of the farmers advocacy group, Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS).
No comments:
Post a Comment