India floods: Mumbai building collapses as monsoon rains wreak havoc
Flooding across India, Nepal and Bangladesh has left parts of cities underwater with storm moving on to Pakistan, lashing the port of Karachi
At least seven people are dead and as many as 40 feared trapped after a building collapsed in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, as monsoon downpours continue to cause havoc across South Asia.
The four-storey residential building gave way on Thursday morning in the densely populated area of Bhendi Bazaar, after heavy rains turned roads into rivers.
Rescue workers, police and residents helped pull 13 people out of the rubble and were looking for those buried beneath. Authorities have advised people living in an adjacent building to vacate after it developed cracks following the collapse.
American men are taking advantage of legal loopholes to marry children as young as 12
The problem has affected as many as 200,000 children in the the US since 2000
Men in the United States are taking advantage of exceptions in state laws to marry minors at an alarming rate, leading to disastrous consequences for many girls who become trapped with little ability to fend for themselves.
In the majority of states, people need to be 18 years old in order to get married — but all but three states make parental or court exceptions to that rule leading a group of predominantly young girls into dangerous situations. And, contributing to those lax allowances are 25 states that have no statutory “floor”, meaning a child of any age can technically get married to an adult with certain permissions.
As a result, more than 200,000 children were married between 2000 and 2015, and many of those were young girls marrying adult men, according to new research from the Tahirih Justice Centre.
Spain's Muslims see hatred spike since Barcelona attacks
Until the Barcelona terrorist attacks, it seemed as if Spain were almost immune to anti-Islamic sentiments. But the number of Islamophobic incidents has increased dramatically since then, and Spanish Muslims are worried.
On the afternoon of the terrorist attack in Barcelona, Fatima El Himer, 17, and her sister Haffssa, 20, had gone shopping in the center of their hometown Granada. They were about to catch the bus back home when Fatima noticed a group of Spanish ladies talking about them.
"We overheard them say that it was a disgrace that we were out here shopping while in Barcelona people had died because of people like us," she says. "I was shocked. I had never heard anyone say anything like it before."
Court suspends controversial decree allowing mining on Amazon reserve
A Brazilian court on Wednesday suspended a controversial decree that would open up a huge natural reserve in the Amazon rainforest to commercial mining.
The federal court in the capital Brasilia said in a statement it had "partially granted an injunction to immediately suspend any administrative act" aimed at scrapping the Denmark-sized reserve, known as Renca.
The order signed by Judge Rolando Spanholo "suspends possible administrative acts based on the decree" signed by President Michel Temer.
The decision follows an outcry from environmental activists, celebrities and the Catholic Church in Brazil, among others.
US, South Korea fly bombers over Korean Peninsula
Updated 0821 GMT (1621 HKT) August 31, 2017
The US and South Korea have staged a joint show of force over the Korean Peninsula, two days after North Korea fired a missile over Japan.
Two B-1B bombers, four F-15 fighter jets and four F-35B fighter jets took part in the joint US-South Korean exercise, an official with the South Korean Air Force told CNN.
The exercise was designed to "strongly counter North Korea's repeated ballistic missile tests and development of nuclear weapons," the official said.
In a statement, the air force said four South Korean jets took part in the exercise alongside two US bombers flying out of Guam and four jets from a US Marine Corps base in Japan.
They conducted a mock air-to-ground bombing drill, which simulated a surgical strike of key enemy facilities, over the Pilseung Range in the eastern province of Gangwon.
Houston flood: 'No way to prevent' chemical plant blast
A chemical plant near the flooded US city of Houston is expected to explode and catch fire in the coming days.
During heavy rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, the Arkema plant at Crosby lost the ability to refrigerate chemical compounds that need to be kept cool.
There was no way to prevent an explosion, the company said.
At least 33 people have been killed in the aftermath of the storm, which the US National Weather Service has now downgraded to a tropical depression.
It has forecast continuing heavy rainfall over eastern Texas and western Louisiana.
US energy supplies have been hit, as oil companies shut down refineries in the Houston area.
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