China sets no growth target for first time in decades; Madrid and Barcelona lockdowns to ease
India has reported more than 6,000 new Covid-19 cases, its biggest one-day increase, while China has abandoned setting a GDP growth target because of the “great uncertainty” caused by the pandemic.
The sharp increase in new infections in India came after the government began easing lockdown restrictions and as airlines prepared to reopen selected domestic routes.
Continue reading...Tweet showed 12 male political leaders after Ghani promised women would be involved in high-level decision-making
People in Afghanistan protested on social media that no women were present at a high-level government meeting, despite assurances from the president that they would be involved in important decision-making roles.
The outcry followed a tweeted photo of a meeting of 12 political leaders at the presidential palace – all of them men.
Continue reading...Kaavan, a 33-year-old elephant living a sorry existence in Islamabad zoo, to be released after campaign by pop icon
The plight of an animal known as Pakistan’s loneliest elephant is set to come to an end after a court declared he should be freed from Islamabad zoo – to the delight of his longtime champion, pop icon Cher.
Kaavan, a 33-year-old Asian elephant from Sri Lanka, has been the focus of a four-year campaign by Cher to secure his release from Murghazar Zoo in Pakistan’s capital, after the singer saw pictures of the elephant living alone and held miserably in chains in a small enclosure, with only a small dirty pond to play in.
Continue reading...State chief minister says areas of city will have to be rebuilt from scratch after deadly storm
The Indian city of Kolkata has been left devastated by the worst cyclone it has seen in 100 years, which swept through India and Bangladesh on Wednesday and killed at least 84 people.
Kolkata, home to almost 15 million people, bore the brunt of Cyclone Amphan, which tore roofs off buildings, smashed windows, pulled down trees and pylons and overturned cars.
Continue reading...Anish Kapoor among those pouring scorn on redevelopment of Lutyens’ central vista, branding it an act of ‘political fanaticism’
It was built by Sir Edwin Lutyens as the grand imperial heart of India, then reclaimed as the seat of power for an independent republic.
Now, government plans to redevelop Delhi’s emblematic central vista and build a new parliament have drawn fierce criticism.
Continue reading...Strong winds tore down electricity pylons, walls and buildings, with full scale of damage still being estimated
The most powerful cyclone to hit Bangladesh and eastern India in more than 20 years tore down homes, carried cars down flooded streets and claimed the lives of up to 20 people.
Authorities began surveying the damage Thursday after millions spent a sleepless night which saw 165km/h (102mph) winds carrying away trees, electricity pylons, walls and roofs, and transformer stations exploding.
Continue reading...Thousands of migrant workers left jobless by Covid-19 pandemic are still on the roads, and evacuations have been hampered by distancing rules
The Bay of Bengal’s fiercest storm this century – super cyclone Amphan – was bearing down on millions of people in eastern India and Bangladesh on Wednesday, with forecasts of a potentially devastating and deadly storm surge.
Authorities have scrambled to stage mass evacuations away from the path of Super Cyclone Amphan, which is only the second “super cyclone” to form in the north-eastern Indian Ocean since records began.
Continue reading...Nineteen-year-old Soraya Ameri had just given birth when gunmen stormed the ward. She recounts her escape – and the desperate search for her daughter
Soraya Ameri’s premature baby daughter had been whisked off to an incubator and the new mother was lying down, exhausted and sore from her stitches, when the shooting started.
Gunmen – dressed in police uniforms – had stormed the maternity ward of a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, where Ameri had just given birth. She was bundled into a safe room with others, one woman next to her in labour, but her baby was outside.
Continue reading...Image captured the plight of the millions of migrant labourers left unable to return home in the pandemic
A photograph of a migrant labourer, his face contorted with anguish as he sits on the roadside in Delhi speaking to his wife about their sick baby boy, has come to symbolise the ordeal of India’s daily wage workers; penniless, and unable to get home to their families because of the lockdown.
Rampukar Pandit, a construction worker in the Indian capital, had heard that his 11-month-old son was seriously unwell. With no public transport to reach his home in Begusarai in Bihar, 1,200 km (745 miles) away, he started walking. He reached Nizamuddin Bridge where, exhausted and hungry, he could go no further.
Continue reading...Thousands of litres of methyl fentanyl point to ‘unprecedented’ production of opioids in so-called Golden Triangle area
Myanmar has made south-east Asia’s largest-ever seizure of synthetic drugs in raids that revealed “unprecedented” production of opioids in the area, the UN has said.
Between February and April, authorities swooped on labs in the lawless Kutkai area of Shan state, seizing nearly 200m meth tablets, 500kg (1,100lbs) of crystal meth, 300kg of heroin, and 3,750 litres of methyl fentanyl.
Continue reading...Father of one victim and brother of the other arrested in connection with the murders
Two female teenagers in Pakistan have been murdered by family members after a video emerged online of them associating with a man.
The pair, said to be aged 16 and 18, were shot dead by male relatives in their remote village in Pakistan’s North Waziristan province this week after footage was posted online of them in the company of a young man in a secluded area.
Continue reading...Mexico and Peru struggle to contain outbreaks while deaths in Spain fall to two-month low
Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil have surpassed the total in Italy and are surging in Mexico and Peru as Latin America struggles to contain its fast-growing coronavirus outbreak.
Spain announced that 87 people had died there in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, the first time the figure has been below 100 in more than two months and a sign the virus is being contained in western Europe as it continues to spread aggressively in Russia, India and parts of Africa.
Continue reading...Attack still unclaimed, but US defies Afghan government, blames Isis and says negotiations with Taliban must continue
Gunmen who attacked a maternity hospital in Kabul came “with the purpose of killing mothers in cold blood”, systematically shooting every woman in labour and new mothers they came across, the charity Médecins Sans Frontières has said.
The attack on Tuesday morning, aimed at the youngest of children and most vulnerable of women, shocked even a country that has endured decades of bloodshed and tens of thousands of civilian deaths.
Continue reading...Peace process between the government and Taliban was crumbling before talks began
In the wake of a devastating attack in Kabul on Tuesday on a maternity unit that saw gunmen shoot women in labour, new mothers and their newborn babies, hopes of a peace process for Afghanistan appear to be slipping away as both the government and Taliban ramp up military operations.
The Taliban on Thursday attacked a city in Afghanistan’s east, killing five civilians and at least one soldier, and injuring dozens more with a truck bomb. The bomber had been targeting an army base in Gardez, but the explosives detonated before he reached it, leaving a too-familiar tangle of rubble and bodies.
Continue reading...French drugmaker criticised for giving US priority; Gordon Brown says Covid-19 solution is global
More than 140 world leaders and experts have called for future Covid-19 vaccines to be made available to everyone free of charge, amid growing tensions between drug companies and governments and a boycott of vaccine summits by the US.
Vaccines and treatments for the virus should not be patented, say the signatories to an open letter published in the run-up to next week’s meeting of the World Health Assembly, the policy-setting body of the UN’s World Health Organization. Instead, scientific breakthroughs must be shared across borders, they urge.
Continue reading...The FBI has offered a $1m reward for the arrest and prosecution for those responsible for the kidnapping of US citizen Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle, eight years ago in Afghanistan.
The offer of a reward for their captors is the latest twist in the protracted saga of Coleman and Boyle, who were the subject of intense media scrutiny following their dramatic rescue in 2017 – and a subsequent trial over allegations of abuse by Boyle.
Continue reading...Mother and child doing well but 18 other babies left motherless after deadly rampage
As gunmen rampaged through a Kabul maternity hospital on Tuesday, shooting new mothers, pregnant women and nurses, labour continued despite the slaughter, with one baby born during the attack, a charity has said.
Twenty-four people were killed, the majority women who had just given birth. They left behind 18 motherless babies, said the Afghan deputy minister of health, Wahid Majrooh, one of the first people to enter the hospital after the attack.
Continue reading...Ashraf Ghani orders resumption of anti-Taliban offensive after attacks in Kabul and Nangarhar
Gunmen attacked a hospital that houses a maternity clinic in Kabul, killing at least 16 people including two newborn babies, and a suicide bomber killed at least 24 others at a funeral on a morning of double tragedy for Afghanistan.
In the capital, soldiers raced out of the hospital carrying infants wrapped in bloodstained blankets to waiting ambulances, after the attackers rampaged their way through the wards.
Continue reading...Company that owns factory admitted it did not have valid environmental clearance
The chemical factory that leaked gas into a coastal Indian city on Thursday morning, killing at least 12 people and putting hundreds in hospital, was operating illegally until at least the middle of 2019, documents show.
In an affidavit [pdf] filed by LG Polymers in May 2019, as part of its application to expand the plastic plant’s operations, the South Korean multinational admitted it was operating its polystyrene plant without the mandatory environmental clearance from the Indian government.
Continue reading...A new generation of poets in Afghanistan is exploring the physical side of love – and isolation is their inspiration
It has been weeks in lockdown for Hoda Khamosh, but the 23-year-old has managed to stick to a routine. This includes sitting down in the afternoons to write poetry, mostly with an erotic spin to it.
In the absence of touch and seeing friends and loved ones, she – along with many others – has turned to erotic poetry, convinced that, “it will help to get through these difficult days”.
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