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http://ift.tt/2riHc43 Heavy rain caused flooding in Jinshan, New Taipei City on June 2, 2017. Heavy rains triggered flooding along Taiwan's north coast and disrupted traffic in the area. / AFP PHOTO / SAM YEH Roads turned into rivers in northern Taiwan Friday as rain lashed the island, with rescuers helping residents evacuate as they struggled against the torrents. Cars, homes and businesses were left underwater after 600 millimetres of rain fell in under 11 hours in some areas. As water levels rose, a concrete road bridge was smashed in half by a swollen river in New Taipei City while thunderstorms forced Songshan airport in the capital Taipei to shut down for two hours. In northern Keelung city, rescuers used rafts to help evacuate local residents and one young girl waiting at a bus stop was rescued after being washed away, Apple Daily reported. Cars sank window-deep in the floods across the north and residents tried hopelessly to bail out their water-logged shops an...

http://ift.tt/2rNt6IQ Sri Lankan residents make their way through floodwaters in Nagoda in Kalutara district on May 29, 2017. Sri Lanka's monsoon toll climbed to 164 with the discovery of more bodies of people buried in landslides triggered by intense rains, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said May 29. / AFP PHOTO / LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI Thousands of Sri Lankan troops battled Monday to get relief supplies to nearly half a million people displaced by the island’s worst flooding in well over a decade, which has killed 169 people. The military said a lull in torrential monsoon rains had allowed it to deploy aircraft, boats and ground troops to evacuate people from flooded areas and deliver food and other essentials. Almost half a million people have had to abandon their homes after the island suffered its worst flooding in 14 years. The Disaster Management Centre said 169 people had been confirmed dead, most of them buried by landslides triggered by Friday’s intense ...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J At least three of 19 people who were allegedly fathered by a now-deceased Dutch doctor through IVF treatment came from a different sperm bank than one until now named in reports, a Dutch newspaper said Saturday. In a widening scandal, Dutch daily tabloid Algemeen Dagblad said a DNA comparison between a legitimate child of doctor Jan Karbaat and three of 19 children suspected to have been sired by him through IVF treatment, came from Rotterdam’s Zuider hospital. Until now, Karbaat — who died last month — is suspected of using his own sperm to inseminate women instead of that of a chosen donor at a different fertility clinic in the town of Barendrecht just outside Europe’s largest port city. “At least three children were fathered by a sperm donor at the Zuider hospital, where Karbaat was a medical director for 15 years,” the newspaper said. “We are investigating the involvement of the Zuider hospital, but at this stage the information is scant,” an official of t...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J The Yobe State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) has registered 100 births at the Pompomari Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp in Damaturu in two years. Alhaji Musa Jidawa, the SEMA’s Executive Secretary made this known to the Newsmen on Friday in Damaturu. He said that 57 boys and 43 girls were delivered at the camp clinic safely. “The camp clinic provided all the ante-natal care and the deliveries were very safe with mothers and babies in very good health,’’ he said. SEMA on Thursday organized a lavish ceremony for the 2,000 camp inmates to celebrate the birth of the 100 babies. It also donated 100 wrappers and baby clothes to each of the 100 mothers and babies as well as birth certificates obtained from the National Population Commission (NPC). Jidawa commended the state government for providing adequate feeding, medical care, clothing as well as water and sanitation facilities in the camp to support the displaced persons. “The support provided by...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J The Republican candidate for the state of Montana’s congressional seat was late Wednesday charged with misdemeanour assault after he allegedly “body-slammed” a journalist from the Guardian, the Gallatin County sheriff’s office said. Reporter Ben Jacobs had earlier posted an audio recording of the alleged assault, in which technology entrepreneur Greg Gianforte can be heard shouting “I’m sick and tired of you guys! … Get the hell out of here!” There are the sounds of a scuffle and Jacobs can be heard saying, “You just body-slammed me and broke my glasses.” The incident took place at Gianforte’s campaign headquarters in Bozeman on Wednesday. Alicia Acuna, a reporter from Fox News who witnessed the incident, wrote that when Jacobs repeatedly asked the Republican a question, “Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him.” “I watched in disbelief as Gianforte then began punching the reporter. As Gianforte moved on...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J China said on Thursday that Chinese warships warned a U.S. Navy warship to leave after it sailed within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island built up by China in the South China Sea. Speaking at a monthly news briefing in Beijing, Defence Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said China had lodged stern representations to the U.S over the patrol and that such moves were not conducive to peace and stability in the South China Sea. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the USS Dewey sailed on a “freedom of navigation operation” close to the Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, among a string of islets, reefs and shoals over which China has territorial disputes with its neighbours. NAN reports that a U.S. Navy warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island built up by China in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. This is the first such challenge to Beijing in the strategic waterway since U.S. President Donald ...

http://ift.tt/2qiV9vF New York – The World Bank said on Thursday that nations are failing to invest enough money to prevent the potential global spread of disease that could kill millions of people and cripple economies. The bank in a report on Thursday said, faced with a pandemic, an unprepared planet could lose billions to trillions of dollars, a significant chunk of the global gross domestic product. Yet containing pandemics,diseases that spread globally compared with epidemics that are localised, would cost about one dollar per person per year in investment, the Bank said. “Given the scale of risk to human lives and livelihoods, the investment case for financing preparedness is compelling,” said Peter Sands, chairman of the Bank’s Working Group on Financing Preparedness which wrote the report. “We must make it happen,” he said. The bank said recent pandemics include the Zika virus, an infectious disease linked to severe birth defects in babies, and the H1N1 virus, also known ...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J Greater Manchester Police have stopped sharing information on Monday’s suicide attack with the U.S. over leaks to New York Times, the BBC reported on Thursday. British officials reacted with anger on Wednesday after the New York Times published forensic photographs from the crime scene at Manchester Arena thought to have been leaked by U.S. intelligence. Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to raise the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, when she meets him at a NATO summit in Brussels. The photographs, which appear to show a detonator, metal nuts and screws and a blue Karrimor backpack that might have contained the bomb, were published a day after the suicide bomber’s name was leaked to U.S. media against the wishes of police in Manchester. “We are furious. This is completely unacceptable,” a British government source said, adding that the matter was being “raised at every relevant level by the British authorities with their U.S. counterpart...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J Egypt on Thursday blocked 21 websites, including Qatari news network Al Jazeera and Islamist-affiliated platforms, following in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Among those blocked since Wednesday evening is the website of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, Ikhwan Online, according to a report in the privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. All websites blocked contain material that “support terrorism and extremism as well as publish lies,” a security source was quoted as saying. The Arabic edition of the Huffington Post was blocked, although the English-language version was accessible. The independent Cairo-based Mada Masr was another site blocked. Since the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Egypt in 2013, Egypt’s relations with Qatar have worsened as Cairo slams Doha for hosting members of the now-banned group. Egypt’s Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates blocked the website of Al Jazeera and othe...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J The World Bank said on Thursday that nations are failing to invest enough money to prevent the potential global spread of disease that could kill millions of people and cripple economies. The bank in a report on Thursday said, faced with a pandemic, an unprepared planet could lose billions to trillions of dollars, a significant chunk of the global gross domestic product. Yet containing pandemics,diseases that spread globally compared with epidemics that are localised, would cost about one dollar per person per year in investment, the Bank said. “Given the scale of risk to human lives and livelihoods, the investment case for financing preparedness is compelling,” said Peter Sands, chairman of the Bank’s Working Group on Financing Preparedness which wrote the report. “We must make it happen,” he said. The bank said recent pandemics include the Zika virus, an infectious disease linked to severe birth defects in babies, and the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu...

http://ift.tt/2pmZZYy “Vice President Yemi Osinbajo recently toured the Niger Delta region and conceded that past administrations were unfair and unjust to the people. The Niger Delta Youth Coalition (NDYC), a socio-cultural group, on Sunday advised the Niger Delta militant groups against resumption of attacks on oil and gas installations in the region. Mr Emmanuel Ogba, the group’s National Coordinator, who gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Port Harcourt. He said that resumption would be counter-productive now that government was addressing their grievances. NAN recalls that a coalition of militant groups in the region threatened to resume attacks on oil and gas installations over alleged unfulfilled promises by the Federal Government. The coalition accused the federal government of being insincere in addressing the challenges in the Niger Delta. Ogba said that hostilities now would further plunge the nation into recession and impov...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J Abuja – Law graduates of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) have sent a 20-point petition to the Senate over their exclusion from the Nigerian Law School programme. ‎ Mr Carl Umegboro, Chairman of the “Law Graduates Forum’’ made this known in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday. He said that the letter was submitted to the Chairman, Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges, Sen. Samuel Anyanwu. ‎ Umegboro said that the forum raised some issues concerning its members in the letter dated April 23. The chairman said the issues would help ‎the Senate during the public hearing on the National Open University of Nigeria and Nigerian law school crisis which the committee was determined to resolve. ‎ He said that the Council of Legal Education released its Public Notice in 2015 through various newspapers against the Open University’s Faculty of Law that admitted its first set in 2004 and graduated in 2013. ‘`The university has at the moment graduated f...

http://ift.tt/eA8V8J New York – The Federal Government has called on Nigerians in the Diaspora to return home and seize the various economic opportunities to make billions of naira. The Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu made the call at an investment forum organised in New York by his ministry for Nigerians in the U.S. Onu explained that various investment opportunities currently existed and were waiting for them at home, challenging them to take it before they were given to foreigners. The former Governor of Abia from 1992 to 1993, informed the Diaspora Nigerians that various research products with opportunities to yield billions of naira, were waiting for them at home. “We are asking you to come and be billionaires. That is what we are asking you, not millionaires. Come and make billions. “We will give you products of research at nothing or little cost to you because it would be nice for the agency that has done this research to get some little returns. “It ...