Top World News

Families on rooftops, homes buried by mud: Asia floods show water is overtaking wind as main threat

Much improved response systems are struggling to cope with ever more powerful and destructive stormsDeath toll from Indonesia floods passes 700 as 1 million evacuatedFamilies stranded on their rooftops. Homes buried by fast-flowing mud. Jagged brown craters scarring lush green hillsides.The scenes are the result of a series of cyclones and storms in a heavy monsoon season that have struck Asia with torrential rains, gutting essential infrastructure and reshaping landscapes. The violent weather has killed at least 1,200 people in the past week and forced a million to flee without knowing whether their homes will still be standing when they go back. Continue reading...

ArticleImg
Trump frees ex-Honduran president from prison as country awaits knife-edge election result

Release of convicted cocaine trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández is latest US interference in election and comes despite Trump’s apparent ‘war on drugs’Analysis: Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex-president shows counter-drug effort is ‘based on lies and hypocrisy’A former president of Honduras who was convicted of drug trafficking has walked free from a US prison after receiving a pardon from Donald Trump, as the country’s presidential election remained on a knife edge with the US-backed candidate leading by 515 votes.Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for allegedly creating “a cocaine superhighway to the United States”, was released from a West Virginia prison after Trump’s intervention, Hernández’s wife confirmed on Tuesday. Continue reading...

British women stranded by landslides in Sri Lankan mountains running out of food and water, daughter says

Friends Melanie Watters and Janine Reid have been trapped in Pussellawa since ThursdayTwo British women stranded by landslides in Sri Lanka’s tea mountains are running out of food and water, the daughter of one of them has said, as officials reported that the death toll of Cyclone Ditwah has reached 465.Melanie Watters, 54, and her friend Janine Reid, 55, both from London, were being driven through the mountains from Kandy in central Sri Lanka on Thursday when the road in front of them was swamped, sending a bus nearby over a cliff-edge. Continue reading...

ArticleImg
Tunisian police detain leading human rights defender as sweep against critics widens

Tunisian police on Tuesday arrested prominent opposition lawyer and longtime human rights defender Ayachi Hammami at his home outside the capital, acting on a five-year prison sentence issued against him last week in a prominent "conspiracy against state security" case, his family said.

WATCH: Germany launches new federal police's drone defense unit

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt on Tuesday inaugurated the country's new federal police drone defense unit, which can be deployed across the country and "is equipped with the latest technology for smart drone defense."