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natural disaster · natural disaster

State officials said wildfires across more than 250,000 acres have led to widespread evacuations and power outages.

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Sophie Woods ran the Via Alpina through storms, heat of up to 37C and dodged floods and wildfires across eight countries.

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Hungary is fully shutting down its sole nuclear power plant for the first time due to the record low levels of the Danube River, straining energy supplies and posing a major test for the economy and new Prime Minister Péter Magyar. One of the two reactors still operating at the Paks plant was shut down early on Sunday, with the final one powering down later in the day, according to Magyar. He cited the progressively lower water levels, which are causing a shortage of water for cooling at the...

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Fires burned across much of Europe, an earthquake in Japan killed dozens, record-low water levels in Bulgaria exposed the remains of a woolly mammoth, and tens of thousands sought to cross into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta before eventually returning home: FRANCE 24 looks back at some of the week's most striking images.

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Prolonged drought and extreme heat across Europe have also triggered an energy crisis. For the first time ever, Hungary announced the shutdown of the country’s only nuclear power plant, after water levels in the Danube fell to a record low. Peter O’Brien explains.

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The effects of human-made climate change are being felt across Europe during this sweltering summer, from record heat-related deaths in Austria, Britain, France and Germany, to tinderbox conditions fuelling historic wildfires in Spain, France and elsewhere. Charlotte Hughes takes a look at the situation in Greece.

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Here in France, a wildfire in the mountainous southeastern Var department, which had been brought under control three days ago, flared up again on Friday, forcing authorities to evacuate nearly 2,500 people overnight. Meanwhile, our reporter James Andre visited Gironde, where France’s biggest wildfire in more than 70 years was recently brought under control.

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French firefighters have won out over a massive blaze, with almost 200,000 evacuees returning home. But Europe's climate-fueled wildfire season is far from over.

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China increased the death toll caused by flash flooding in the northwestern province of Gansu last week as large parts of the country continued to battle the impact of heavy rainfall and swollen rivers. On Sunday, the state news agency Xinhua said the death toll in Gansu’s Weiyuan county had risen from 10 to 25, adding that the flash floods which struck last Sunday had also injured a further 23 people. The National Commission for Disaster Prevention, Reduction and Relief has asked the provincial...

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An elderly woman who developed heatstroke while taking shelter in a car was the latest fatality from a powerful earthquake that struck Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto last week, officials said on Sunday as concerns over heat-related illnesses grow in an area that is also suffering extreme temperatures. The woman in her seventies with heatstroke was found in a car, Kumamoto officials said, as they raised the death toll from the quake to 36. The magnitude 7.1 hit Kumamoto prefecture on...

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Volkswagen approaches headhunter to find positions for hundreds of departing managers

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Health checkpoints and surveillance aim to contain the outbreak and protect endangered mountain gorillas.

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This article was first published on August 4, 2006. Observatory lashed over typhoon signal by Agnes Lam, Clifford Lo and Martin Wong The Observatory was under fire yesterday (August 3, 2006) for not hoisting a storm warning above the No 3 as Typhoon Prapiroon lashed some parts of the city with winds of up to 200km/h. Unions said workers had been put in danger as they had gone to work as required because a No 8 signal had not been hoisted, while the swirling winds toppled cargo, blew down trees,...

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Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya stressed that the continued outbreak "is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever recorded" and is now the second-largest by total confirmed cases.

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The United States has just recorded its worst measles outbreak in more than three decades, and it’s part of a resurgence playing out on multiple continents.

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A swiftly moving wildfire broke out in Spokane County, in the US state of Washington, on Saturday, forcing residents to leave their homes and evacuate to safety as crews hurried to contain the fire, according to CNN reports.

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Death toll from Japan's Kumamoto Earthquake rises to 35

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Drawing on the stark contrast between the conclusion of the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the accelerating Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article analyzes the structural limits of leveraging mega-sporting events for global health governance. It shows that while partnerships like the FIFA-WHO alliance advance health advocacy, their impact remains constrained by non-binding terms and event-bound scopes, calling for stronger multilateral mechanisms.

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Managers capitalise on investors’ desire to ‘hedge’ against US market bets

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Officials say they must shut down nation's sole nuclear plant as record-low Danube water levels disrupt reactor cooling.

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As Europe faces its worst wildfires in decades, Australia offers lessons in disaster preparedness.

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French wildfires show signs of easing, with containment efforts holding in Var and Gironde after destructive blazes.

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The current strain has so far killed 1,587 people, and there is currently no approved vaccine or treatment.

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According to its information, extreme heat, drought, and wildfires in Europe could lead to the most significant decline in grain production in decades

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Bloomberg Athens Deputy Bureau Chief Paul Tugwell says Greece's wildfire response is under severe strain as gale-force winds, dry conditions and difficult terrain hamper firefighting efforts, with major blazes continuing to spread in central and southern parts of the country. He says European Union countries are coordinating firefighting resources across borders as climate change extends the wildfire season and raises concerns about the long-term economic and insurance costs of increasingly destructive fires. (Source: Bloomberg)

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Japan’s Kumamoto prefectural government said on Saturday it has ended rescue operations at an Aeon shopping centre where seven workers died in an explosion shortly after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the southwestern Japan prefecture four days earlier. Officials said there should be no more people unaccounted for after local police and firefighters, joined by the Self-Defence Forces and others, searched the shopping centre in Kashima. Its second floor collapsed in a possible gas explosion...

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In France, the wildfire in Gironde has now been brought under control, according to the Interior Minister, meaning the flames are no longer spreading. Around 42,000 hectares have been burned over the past nine days.

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French officials on Saturday said that firefighters had managed to stop the spread of the country's largest wildfire in more than 70 years but added that the blaze is not yet under control. France has for weeks been battling wildfires after a series of deadly heatwaves, which scientists have linked to human-made climate change.

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Evacuation orders were issued on Friday for areas west and northwest of Athens, as new wildfires broke out near the Greek capital. Firefighters battled to contain the flames, but winds of around 50 miles per hour hampered efforts by water-bombing aircraft. Meanwhile, fires in other parts of the country were brought under control, although the risk of new outbreaks remains very high.

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The Pulitzer-winning author of Less and Villa Coco explores the art of writing humour – plus 10 of the best novels to make you laugh In March 2020, when the mayor of San Francisco instructed all citizens to remain in their houses due to a pandemic, the first thing I did was order all the books of Agatha Christie. I was not alone; I think many of us immersed ourselves in reliable narratives to drown out the chaos. It did not matter if it ended in marriage or murder; the reliability was what mattered. Later when I realised I would need to hole up for some time, my reading shifted to a different kind of novel. And because, like Christie, our world has an endless supply of new terrors, it is the comic novel that still fills my reading hours. Nobody knows what a comic novel is. And once you start discussing it, all the fun runs out. EB White compared it to dissecting a frog (you’re left with innards and a dead frog) but I would compare it to turning all the lights on at a party: everyone looks terrible and you’ve ruined the party. Most would agree, of course, that Wodehouse wrote comic novels, but I turn to books hardly anybody would classify that way – Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, for instance – that yet seem to me to be a hoot. I think they are books that decide something is funny, as Jerry Seinfeld once defined comedy. In Moby-Dick, it’s a coin nailed to a masthead. In Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, it’s the worst best poem you’ve ever read. And yet we feel we’re getting at something the most solemn narratives aim for: an understanding of the human condition, of grief, of love, of death. All the big stuff. The comic novels I love are books that could just as easily have been tragedies. It is simply that the author has decided it’s funny. Continue reading...