Istanbul: Six dead, dozens wounded in Turkey explosion
At least six people have been killed and 53 wounded in an explosion in a busy area of central Istanbul, Turkish authorities have said.
The blast happened at about 16:20 local time (13:20 GMT) on a shopping street in the Taksim Square area, the Turkish city's governor Ali Yerlikaya said.
It is unclear what caused the explosion, which appears to have been captured on social media videos.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the perpetrators would be punished.
BBC correspondent Orla Guerin, who is in the area, said there was a heavy police presence around Istiklal Street, which had been cordoned off. Helicopters were circling overhead as ambulances went back and forth.
Home Office was told Rwanda policy was making asylum seekers feel suicidal
Accommodation providers told officials of increase in people threatening to harm themselves, minutes of meeting show
The Home Office was warned that its Rwanda policy was causing a rise in the number of asylum seekers reporting feeling suicidal and vanishing from hotel accommodation, an internal safeguarding document has revealed.
The Labour peer Helena Kennedy KC has called the Home Office “heartless” for pursuing the policy despite officials knowing how much damage it was causing to people.
The minutes of an internal Home Office safeguarding board on 27 April 2022, two weeks after the former home secretary, Priti Patel, announced the Rwanda deal, show Home Office officials asking accommodation contractors – including those from Serco and Clearsprings – how asylum seekers were reacting to news about the deal.
All Eyes on the GulfThe Present and Future of Europe's Energy Supply
The autocratic countries of the Persian Gulf play a key role in the new world order – and for the future of Germany's economy. Complete dependence will be difficult to avoid.
By Monika Bolliger, Claus Hecking, Martin Hesse, Marina Kormbaki, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Ralf Neukirch, Thomas Schulz und Gerald Traufetter
The Saudi Arabian desert can seem endless, particularly here in the northwestern part of the country, where people are a rare sight. For hours on end, there is only sand, rock, heat and the occasional empty road. It seems almost unreal, almost like a fata morgana, when long columns of dump trucks suddenly appear just before the Red Sea coast. They are followed by a swarm of excavators, digging their way through dunes and scree across several dozen kilometers.
Perhaps, grumble critics, the plans for what is to be built here are nothing more than hot air. After all, those plans sound far too crazy to be true: a model region called NEOM, as big as the German state of Hesse, rising out of the desert, complete with technology parks, industrial production and a 170-kilometer-long futuristic city – 500 meters high, 200 meters wide, completely CO2 neutral. Residents will move through the metropolis in flying taxis and high-speed trains. The price tag? Five-hundred-billion dollars. For the first phase.
G20 pandemic fund launched by Indonesian president
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has said at least $31 billion is required to tackle the next global pandemic. The fund has raised $1.4 billion so far.
Health ministers from the Group of 20 (G20) large economies on Sunday agreed to establish a fund to tackle the next global pandemic.
The fund is intended to support low to middle income countries finance efforts like surveillance, research, and better access to vaccines, among other measures. An estimated $1.4-billion (€1.3-billion) has been pledged so far.
In a video address, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said that that the amount of money raised so far is "not enough."
Taliban bans Afghan women from gyms, public baths
Gyms and public baths are now also off limits to Afghan women, the Taliban confirmed Sunday, days after banning them from parks and funfairs.
Women are increasingly being squeezed out of public life since the Taliban's return last year despite the hardline Islamists promising a softer version of the harsh rule that characterised their first stint in power that ended in 2001.
Most female government workers have lost their jobs -- or are being paid a pittance to stay at home -- while women are also barred from travelling without a male relative, and must cover up with a burqa or hijab when out of the home.
Schools for teenage girls have also been shuttered across most of the country since the Taliban's August 2021 return.
As climate clock ticks, war in Ukraine upends Arctic research
A team of Russian and Norwegian scientists stumbled upon the fastest-warming hotspot known on earth. Then the war began.
In a cold basement room in the Arctic, Andreas Altenburger moves among row after row of marine specimens. A tall narrow jar holds a shark. “Velvet belly lanternshark, 1923,” reads the label in old-fashioned flowery script. In other containers, brown-gray deep sea sponges sway in ethanol. In one jar sits a lavender-gray spoonarm octopus the size of a child’s fist.
Altenburger, 41, oversees the Polar Museum’s specimen collection in Tromsø, a small but lively city that serves as a gateway for climate researchers studying the Arctic Ocean’s warming waters. Set on an island off the Norwegian mainland, Tromsø, with just more than 75,000 inhabitants, is the largest non-Russian municipality within the Arctic Circle, the 20-million-square-kilometre (7.7-million-square-mile) cap at the north end of the world.
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