World News
Turkey settles scores and strikes Kurdish regions of Syria and Iraq
Reading Time: 2 minutes
Eva Deschamps / November 20, 2022
The Turkish Defense Ministry announced Sunday morning that it had launched the air operation “Sword Claw” in northern Iraq and Syria, accusing its regions of being “used as bases by terrorists.” “The planes have taken off from their bases, the air operation has begun,” the ministry said in a statement, a week after the deadly attack that hit a shopping street in the heart of Istanbul.
The operation was carried out “in accordance with the rights of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, in order to eliminate terrorist attacks in northern Iraq and Syria, ensure border security and eliminate terrorism at its source,” it said in a statement.
The hour of reckoning has come,” the Turkish Defense Ministry announced on Twitter on Sunday, showing a photo of a plane taking off for a night operation without specifying a location.
Nearly 25 airstrikes were carried out by the Turkish military in the Syrian provinces of Raqa and Hassake (northeast) and Aleppo (north), killing at least nine Kurdish forces and six Syrian regime forces, and wounding 31 others, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), a London-based NGO with an extensive network of sources in Syria.
The raids came days after the PKK and the Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) rejected Ankara’s accusations of responsibility and denied any link to the Nov. 13 Istanbul attack, which killed six people and wounded 81 others.
Kobane, the city that defeated the Islamic State, is the target of bombing by the Turkish occupation air force,” announced Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, a Kurdish-dominated armed coalition), who had denied any connection with the attack.
Reading Time: < 1 minutes
Sylvie Claire / September 23, 2023
At least 25 people, including two children, died when a bus crashed into a ravine in the Andean region of Huancavelica, in southern Peru, the authorities announced in a revised death toll on Monday evening.
An initial police report put the death toll at 20, with a further 35 injured. A statement from the Ministry of Health later that morning put the death toll at 24. Finally, at the end of the day on Monday, the death toll stood at “25 dead and 34 wounded”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
The accident occurred on Sunday night, when the bus carrying over 50 passengers from Huanta in Ayacucho to Huancayo in the Junin region ran off the road.
Images show the damaged bus lying on its side near a river below the ravine, debris and personal belongings strewn all around.
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte expressed her “condolences to the families” from New York, where she will be attending the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations. The Peruvian Episcopal Conference, for its part, urged the government to “carry out a serious investigation” to prevent such accidents from happening again.
On August 13, another accident in the same region left 13 people dead and 5 seriously injured.
Road accidents are frequent in Peru, mainly due to speeding and poor road maintenance, especially in mountainous areas.
Reading Time: < 1 minutes
Sylvie Claire / September 17, 2023
In Japan, the number of people aged 100 has reached a record level: the world’s third-largest economy now has 92,139 people aged 100 or over. That’s 1,613 more than a year ago, reported the Ministry of Health in Tokyo on Friday.
For over half a century, the number of people aged 100 has been rising every year. Due to a low birth rate and almost non-existent immigration, no other industrial state is aging as fast as this East Asian country.
Japan’s population is also shrinking at a record pace. Last year, the number of Japanese fell by 801,000, the biggest drop since comparable data have been recorded. There are now 122.4 million.
When the Japanese Ministry of Health began compiling statistics in 1963, there were 153 centenarians. Twenty-five years later, there were over 10,000. According to the latest figures, around 88% of centenarians are women. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy for women is around 87 years, and 81 for men.
Reading Time: < 1 minutes
Steph Deschamps / September 17, 2023
The death toll from the earthquake in Morocco has risen to 2,946, the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior announced on Wednesday evening. A further 5,674 people were injured.
The previous death toll was 2,901. The death toll is expected to rise further. Hopes of finding survivors are now very slim. Rescue workers have not yet been able to reach all the villages affected in the Atlas Mountains.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the country on Friday night. The epicenter was located some 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakech. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 300,000 people in and around Marrakech were affected by the disaster.
World News2 days ago
At least 25 dead in a bus accident in Peru
Entertainment2 days ago
The Young and the Restless mourns the death of actor Billy Miller
World News1 week ago