Oroville Dam risk: Thousands ordered to evacuate homes
More than 180,000 people in northern California have been told to evacuate their homes after an overflow channel at the tallest dam in the US was weakened by heavy rainfall.
The emergency spillway of the 770 ft (230m) tall Oroville Dam was close to collapse, officials said.
The excess water has now stopped flowing.
However, late on Sunday Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the evacuation orders remained in place.
Water levels in the reservoir have risen following heavy rain and snow after years of severe drought.
It is the first time that Lake Oroville has experienced such an emergency in the dam's near 50-year history.
Philippine bid to jail nine-year-olds is 'a great child violation', Unicef says
Duterte’s allies have been pushing to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to nine
A law proposing children as young as nine be jailed for crimes is “wrong from every angle”, the head of the United Nations children’s agency in the Philippines has warned.
“If they grow up, spending their teenage years in a prison, they most probably will be damaged for life,” Unicef’s country representative, Lotta Sylwander, said in a telephone interview from Manila.
The current age of criminal responsibility in the Philippines is 15.President Rodrigo Duterte’s allies have been pushing to lower it, coupled with another draft bill that would restore the death penalty.
Amnesty accuses Tunisian authorities of torture ahead of key talks with Germany
The rights group has reported 23 instances of torture committed by security officials. Tunisia's prime minister is to meet with Germany's Angela Merkel this week to discuss a deportation deal for rejected asylum seekers.
Rights group Amnesty International fears that democratic reforms in Tunisia are being undermined by a rise in "brutal tactics" used by the country's security forces.
A report published by the rights group on Monday "exposes how entrenched impunity has fostered a culture in which violations by security forces have been able to thrive," Amnesty's North Africa research director, Heba Morayef, said.
Entitled "An end to the fear: abuses under Tunisia's state of emergency," the report details 23 cases of torture and ill-treatment committed by the police, the National Guard and counterterrorism brigades in the past two years.North Korean ballistic missile has already met its match
The Asian missile defense game is heating up considerably.
FEBRUARY 13, 2017 1:25 PM
North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile over the Sea of Japan on February 12 came about a week after the US successfully destroyed the same type of intermediate range ballistic missile in a test off Hawaii.
The interceptor that took out the land-launched missile was fired from the USS John Paul Jones destroyer on February 3 in the first test of the device, known as the new Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA. It was developed by Raytheon Co. of the US and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan under the US Missile Defence Agency.
Far-right outcast Geert Wilders vows to 'de-Islamise' the Netherlands after taking lead in Dutch polls
The Dutch Trump has promised to ‘make The Netherlands ours again’, but other parties say they won’t work with him in a coalition – even if he wins the election
The controversial right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders says he intends to govern in the Netherlands after the elections, and expects the electorate to rise up if other political parties deny him that option.
In a rare 40-minute interview with broadcaster WNL, the far-right leader also compared mosques to Nazi temples and the Quran to Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf.
Mr Wilders does not often sit down for in-depth interviews with Dutch media. The founder of the one-man Party for Freedom, or PVV, prefers to control the narrative through Twitter. The “Dutch Trump” knows that the media will pick up news from his timeline.
Latin America leads the way in clean energy
One of the most vulnerable regions when it comes to the effects of climate change, Latin America is increasingly leading global efforts to transition to renewable energy sources.
Latin America is poised to take on a leading role on climate change and renewable energy in the global arena in 2017. The enormous potential and rapid spread of renewable energy in the region has fueled hope of a global transition to a low-carbon economy. The added bonus: an economic opportunity that extends well beyond the borders of Latin America.
Technological innovations have increased efficiency and reduced costs boosting the grid competitiveness of renewable energy. According to a World Economic Forum report in December 2016, in countries around the world – notably Brazil, Chile, and Mexico in Latin America – solar and wind energy are outcompeting fossil fuels. Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts solar energy may be cheaper than coal globally by 2025, or earlier in places that have limited coal deposits and a carbon tax, such as Brazil. In a revolutionary shift, renewables surpassed coal in 2015 as the world’s largest source of installed power capacity.
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