World News
In Burma, the death toll rises to 145 after the passage of the terrible cyclone « Mocha”
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Steph Deschamps / May 23, 2023
In Burma, the death toll from Cyclone Mocha, which swept through the country and Bangladesh, has risen to 145, mostly Rohingya, the junta announced in a statement Friday.
The cyclone hit Burma and Bangladesh on Sunday, with heavy rains and 195 km/h winds that demolished buildings and turned streets into rivers. The strongest storm in the region in more than a decade ravaged villages, uprooted trees and cut off communications in much of Rakhine State, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in camps displaced by decades of inter-ethnic conflict.
A total of 145 people were killed in the cyclone,” the junta’s information team said in the statement. “According to the information we got, four soldiers, 24 residents and 117 Bengalis were killed in the storm,” it said.
Bengali” is a derogatory term used in Burma to designate the Muslim minority. Some 600,000 Rohingya have been living in Burma for several generations, deprived of access to health and education, “under an apartheid regime”, according to Amnesty International. All are treated as foreigners and even have to ask for permission to travel outside their village.
A Rohingya village chief had told AFP that more than 100 people were missing in his village alone in the aftermath of the cyclone. Another village chief near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, told AFP that at least 105 Rohingya had died in the vicinity of the town, and that the count was not complete.
In neighboring Bangladesh, officials told AFP that no one died in the cyclone, which passed near huge refugee camps housing nearly a million Rohingya.
The junta’s statement also said that media reports about the deaths of 400 Rohingya were “false” and that action would be taken against the media outlets that published them.
Since its coup more than two years ago, the junta has arrested dozens of journalists and closed media outlets deemed critical of its regime. Ships and the air force have brought in thousands of bags of rice and thousands of electricians, firefighters and rescue workers had been deployed to Rakhine State, junta-backed media reported Friday.
Flights resumed normally at Sittwe airport on Thursday, according to the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper. Some international aid agencies, including the World Food Programme, were working on the ground in Sittwe town this week, according to AFP correspondents on the ground.
When asked by AFP, a junta spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about whether UN agencies had access to IDP camps outside Sittwe.
In 2017, a violent military crackdown drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, reporting stories of murder, rape and arson.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, who has been in power since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup and was head of the armed forces during the 2017 crackdown, called the identity of the Rohingya “imaginary. »
Cyclones, sometimes called hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific, are a regular threat to the northern Indian Ocean coasts, where tens of millions of people live.
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Eva Deschamps / October 31, 2023
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, 63 employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have already lost their lives in the Gaza Strip. Ten aid workers have been killed in the last 72 hours, according to this new toll released by the agency on its website on Monday.
At least 22 UNRWA staff were also injured. Since October 7, 44 UNRWA facilities have also been destroyed. Of its 22 health centers, only nine are still operational, the UN agency said, warning that the provision of health care is made even more difficult by the very low fuel supply.
The UN agency had previously reported that several of its warehouses had been looted. “Due to the very limited aid available and overcrowded shelters, growing tensions are being reported within the displaced communities,” it stressed. Some 672,000 refugees are living in 149 UNRWA facilities across the Gaza Strip, “in increasingly difficult conditions”. “The ability to provide vital assistance was further hampered by the 36-hour communications blackout between October 27 and 29”, UNRWA added.
In all, an estimated 1.4 million people have been displaced in the Gaza Strip. Over 120,000 of them have taken refuge in public buildings such as hospitals and schools.
“The aid currently available is insufficient to meet the most basic needs of displaced people and the communities hosting them”, warns the UN agency.
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Sylvie Claire / October 31, 2023
This research into mammal reproduction in space could prove crucial for future solar system exploration missions.
Mouse embryos were grown on board the International Space Station (ISS) and developed normally, according to a Japanese study published in the scientific journal “iScience” on Saturday, October 28.
This is “the very first study to show that mammals might be able to thrive in space”, claim Yamanashi University and the Riken National Research Institute.
The researchers, including Teruhiko Wakayama, a professor at Yamanashi University’s Center for Advanced Biotechnology, and a team from the Japanese space agency Jaxa, sent frozen mouse embryos aboard a rocket to the ISS in August 2021. The astronauts thawed the embryos at an early stage, using a specially designed device, and cultured them on board the station for four days.
The experiment “clearly demonstrated that gravity had no significant effect”, noted the researchers. After analyzing the blastocysts (cells that develop into fetuses and placentas) that were returned to their laboratories on Earth, they observed no particular changes in the state of DNA and genes.
“In the future, it will be necessary to transplant blastocysts grown in microgravity on the ISS into mice to see if the mice can give birth,” in order to confirm that the blastocysts are normal, say Yamanashi University and the Riken Institute.
This research could prove crucial for future space exploration and colonization missions. As part of its Artemis program, NASA plans to send humans back to the Moon to learn how to live there in the long term, and to prepare for a trip to Mars in the late 2030s.
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Steph Deschamps / October 25, 2023
The world’s oldest dog died last weekend in Portugal. Bobi, a purebred Rafeiro de l’Alentejo, was 31 years and 165 days old, reports the British public broadcaster BBC on Monday.
Last February, Bobi entered the Guinness Book of Records as not only the oldest living dog, but also the oldest dog of all time.
The old record had been held for almost 100 years by Bluey from Australia. He died in 1939 at the age of 29 years and five months.
Bobi has spent his entire life with the Costa family in the village of Conqueiros, near the west coast of Portugal.
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