Hurricane Irma: Florida braces for storm arrival
Hurricane Irma has strengthened to a category four storm as it nears Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 130mph (209km/h).
Wind gusts close to hurricane force are already battering islands in Florida's south, with the mainland due to be hit in the coming hours.
Water levels are already rising on the coast of the US state where a huge storm surge is expected.
At least 25 people died when Irma earlier hit several Caribbean islands.
In Florida, 6.3 million people - about 30% of the state's population - had been told to evacuate. But on Saturday, the state governor said it was now too late to leave for anyone remaining.
Child survivor of Isis suicide bomb in court battle to join family
Haidar Mustapha was refused leave to remain in Britain on the say of a single official – the victim, the boy’s lawyers say, of a flawed system
Everyone agrees – even the Home Office – that Haidar Mustapha was the victim of a horrifying tragedy. The boy, then three, had been visiting cousins with his parents in Beirut on 12 November 2015 when a suicide bomber, claimed later by Islamic State, pulled up on a motorbike next to their SUV. The attacker had intended to blow up his bike first, then detonate his explosive vest after a crowd had gathered. Instead something went wrong. The bike exploded as he was getting off, shredding the family’s car.
Haidar’s mother, Leila Taleb, and father, Hussein Mustapha, died instantly, two of the 43 people killed in Lebanon’s worst terrorist attack since its civil war in the 1980s. But Haidar escaped with minor cuts and burns because he had been sitting in his mother’s lap. Her body shielded him from the blast. A bystander saw the boy moving in the wreckage and picked him up to take him to hospital when the second bomb exploded. Haidar was saved from the shrapnel by his rescuer’s body.
Through war and IS threat, the Erbil teahouse that never closed
History lives in Machko, a book-lined teahouse in Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. With a controversial independence referendum looming, the past is once again determining the future as the lessons of history are not necessarily being learned.
The pantheon of Kurdish heroes looms over the packed teahouse – or chai khana, as it’s known in these parts – staring down from walls plastered with photographs of cultural greats including writers, musicians and much loved shayirs, or poets, who have recorded the sorrows and yearnings of their people through the years.
There’s the iconic image of the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani, a nationalist hero whose descendants continue to dominate politics in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, today. To his left, is a somber Qazi Muhammed, a separatist leader who headed the short-lived, breakaway Republic of Mahabad in the 1940s in Iranian territory before he was hanged for treason. Finally, there’s the current crop of political stalwarts: Massoud Barzani, head of the KDP (Kurdish Democratic Party) and Jalal Talabani of the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan). The two living Kurdish legends smile genially next to each other in the photograph even though in real life they have competed – sometimes murderously – for much of their lives.
Where Dreams Come to DieMigrant Path in Europe Ends at Brenner Pass
Migrants who make it across the Mediterranean to Italy dream of continuing on to northern Europe. Most, though, are unable to make it past the Brenner Pass. A visit to Europe's waiting room.
By Fiona Ehlers
The train station in Bolzano, a city in the northern Italian province of South Tyrol, has become a waiting room for Europe in recent weeks -- a transit camp for two types of passengers. Both are traveling with little luggage, and they are from worlds that rarely intersect.
On a Wednesday morning in late August, a young man from Gambia named Zacharias is standing at the window of the express train from Verona to Munich. He gazes down at colorfully dressed mountain climbers, vacationers and European travelers as they disembark in Bolzano and meet friends or family on the platform. Zacharias, though, stays on the train. He manages to escape the notice of police officers and border guards who comb through the compartments and fish out anyone who looks like a refugee. The train begins to move.
Death toll in Mexico's biggest quake continues to rise
At least 90 people killed across the country as emergency workers still look for victims under the rubble.
Anguished mourners filled the streets of the southern Mexican city Juchitan, which was devastated by the most powerful earthquake to strike in 85 years, as officials put the death toll across the country to 90.
Emergency services in the southern state of Oaxaca said on Sunday there had been 71 confirmed fatalities in the state alone from Thursday night's 8.1 magnitude quake that struck off the coast of Chiapas.
The quake was stronger than a devastating 1985 temblor that flattened swathes of Mexico City and killed thousands.
SEASON OF SMOKE
In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?”
THE NEWS FROM the natural world these days is mostly about water, and understandably so.
We hear about the record-setting amounts of water that Hurricane Harvey dumped on Houston and other Gulf cities and towns, mixing with petrochemicals to pollute and poison on an unfathomable scale. We hear too about the epic floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people from Bangladesh to Nigeria (though we don’t hear enough). And we are witnessing, yet again, the fearsome force of water and wind as Hurricane Irma — one of the most powerful storms ever recorded — leaves devastation behind in the Caribbean, with Florida now in its sights.
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