Rescue workers scrambled yesterday to find survivors and victims of the devastation wreaked by the worst floods to hit western Europe in living memory, which have already left more than 150 people dead and dozens more missing. 

The “mini earthquakes” that elephants make by both walking and vocalising are not only a way to communicate with each other but can be used to track their movements, according to a study.  

Rescue workers searched flood-ravaged parts of Germany and Belgium for survivors on Saturday after burst rivers and flash floods this week collapsed houses and claimed at least 157 lives.

The death toll from devastating floods in Europe soared to at least 126 yesterday, most in western Germany where emergency responders were frantically searching for missing people.   

The Eiffel Tower reopened on Friday after an eight-month shutdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic, its longest closure since World War Two.

The number of people who lost their lives in the heavy floods in the western part of Germany increased to at least 81 on Friday, according to German broadcaster ARD, in what is Germany's worst mass loss of life in years.

Nations most vulnerable to the impacts of global warming yesterday called for rich countries to live up to their promise to finance the fight against climate change, ahead of a crunch UN summit.

Amnesty International yesterday said that migrants held in Libyan detention camps are subject to horrific sexual violence at the hands of guards, including being forced to barter sex for clean water, food and access to sanitation. 

Climate change and deforestation have flipped a large swathe of the Amazon basin from absorbing to emitting planet-warming CO2, a transformation that could turn humanity’s greatest natural ally in the fight against global warming into a foe, researchers reported on Wednesday. 

A Mexican court has sentenced a man to 208 years in prison for the criminal homicides of 26 people, most of them children, who died when a school collapsed during a powerful earthquake that struck Mexico City in 2017, authorities said on Wednesday. 

Nearly 23 million children missed out on routine vaccinations last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the highest number in more than a decade, fuelling outbreaks of measles, polio and other preventable diseases, UN agencies said yesterday. 

President Joe Biden welcomes German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House on Thursday for what is likely her last official visit to Washington, and she’s conveying a message to Berlin’s close ally: You’ve got a friend.

Celebrity Dutch crime reporter Peter R. De Vries has died just over a week after being shot in the street, his family and his employer RTL Netherlands news said on Thursday.

At least eight people have died and dozens of people are missing in Germany after heavy flooding turned streams and streets into raging torrents, sweeping away cars and causing some buildings to collapse.

The UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday highlighted the global “scourge” of systemic racism and ordered an independent investigation into racially-fuelled police violence around the world.  

1961 - Spain accepts equal rights for men and women

We will look back in anger, and we will look back in shame.

1789 – Storming of the Bastille in Paris. This event escalates the widespread discontent into the French Revolution.

Commuters soared over one of the world’s biggest and most traffic-clogged cities as a new cable car system went into operation in the Mexican capital on Monday. 

France’s antitrust watchdog yesterday slapped a 500 million euro ($593 million) fine on Alphabet’s Google for failing to comply fully with temporary orders it had given in a row with the country’s news publishers.