U.N. says most Libya flooding deaths could have been avoided, as officials warn the toll could still soar
CBSN
The number of people killed by the devastating flash flooding in northern Libya remained unclear Thursday, due to the daunting scale of the catastrophe and political chaos that's left the African nation divided between two governments for years, but it was undoubtedly well into the thousands. With survivors still desperately hoping to find the bodies of lost loved ones in debris-choked towns and cities, the United Nations said most of the thousands of deaths could have been avoided.
With better functioning coordination in the crisis-wracked country, "they could have issued the warnings and the emergency management forces would have been able to carry out the evacuation of the people, and we could have avoided most of the human casualties," Petteri Taalas, head of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, told reporters.
An enormous surge of water, brought by torrential downpours from Storm Daniel over the weekend, burst two upstream river dams and reduced the city of Derna to an apocalyptic wasteland where entire blocks and untold numbers of people were washed into the Mediterranean Sea.
Collville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France — The word "hero" is overused. But if not for the courage of the few remaining D-Day survivors and their friends who fell as they launched the fight to oust Adolf Hitler's Nazi German forces from France 80 years ago, there would have been no celebrations this week in Normandy.
France's domestic intelligence agency has detained a 26-year-old Russian-Ukrainian man on suspicion of planning a violent act after he injured himself in an explosion, prosecutors said on Wednesday. The news came hours before world leaders gathered in the nation to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy.
A British-Mexican man who says he was targeted for being gay and arrested on false drug charges in Qatar has been given a suspended six-month jail sentence, a fine amounting to about $2,700, and a deportation order by a court in the Arab nation, which is a vital U.S. ally in the Middle East, according to his family and Mexican officials.
An Israeli strike early Thursday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed more than 30 people, including 23 women and children, according to local health officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory. The hospital treating victims said it had received the bodies of at least "37 martyrs" from the strike, according to Agence France-Presse. But a U.N. official tells the Reuters news agency the death toll is between 35 and 45, though it still can't confirm any numbers.
Jerusalem — Thousands of Israeli nationalists marched Wednesday through east Jerusalem as authorities deployed police with tensions sky-high nearly eight months into the Gaza war. That war appeared to be intensifying in Gaza and the far-right nationalists staged their annual march – long deemed a provocation by Palestinians – in Jerusalem.
The world has now marked one full year of back-to-back monthly heat records, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Wednesday. It said last month was the hottest May in recorded history — the 12th consecutive month in which the monthly high temperature record was broken.
New Delhi — India's 2024 election results show Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to win his third term in office, with the political alliance led by his Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on track to win a solid majority of the seats up for grabs in India's Parliament. Final numbers were expected later Tuesday, but the results of the world's biggest democratic elections appeared clear: Modi will keep his job, but with a smaller mandate than was widely expected or promised by his party.
Seoul, South Korea — South Korea on Tuesday took steps to suspend a contentious military agreement with North Korea and resume front-line military activities, as tension between the rivals rises over the North's recent launch of trash-carrying balloons. North Korea didn't immediately respond, but South Korea's resumption of firing exercises or propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts will likely prompt North Korea to take similar or stronger steps along the rivals' heavily militarized border.