Author: Steven Sahiounie

The number of natural disasters driven by extreme weather increased fivefold over the past 50 years, leading to the deaths of over two million people and causing damage worth $3.64 trillion, the UN’s meteorology agency has said. During the past half-century, weather-related disasters such as heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts occurred somewhere on Earth every day, killing 115 people and delivering losses of $202 million on the average, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has revealed. The figures came from Wednesday’s report by the WMO, which was based on the agency’s ‘Atlas’, described as the most comprehensive review of mortality and economic losses…

Europol has released video footage of a huge raid involving hundreds of police, both on foot and in choppers, breaking up an Albanian drug ring across Spain and seizing thousands of cannabis plants as well as cash and vehicles. The pan-European law-enforcement agency made 107 arrests, discovered 51 cannabis farms and seized 25,000 cannabis plants, in a massive coordinated raid carried out at 42 locations across Spain. The agency said the operation took down an ‘Albanian clan’ running an industrial cannabis operation across Europe. Albanian, Spanish and German authorities were involved in the bust. The video depicts dozens of police…

Aviem Sella, who the US tried for decades to extradite from Israel to stand trial on espionage charges, has been given a symbolic promotion in rank. It was announced days after a meeting between the leaders of the two nations. Sella, 75, was the focus of a big scandal that put a rift between the US and its Middle-Eastern ally back in the 1980s. The Israel Air Force fighter pilot was taking a sabbatical in the US and, while there, had recruited US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard. Pollard abused his access to American secrets to sell them to the…

US President Joe Biden had instructed the ousted Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani to fix his government’s “perception” problem just weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban, a report says, citing an official phone call. The conversation, audio and transcripts of which were obtained by Reuters, took place on July 23, three weeks before the Taliban captured Kabul and forced Ghani to flee the country. Biden urged his Afghan counterpart to fix the country’s image in terms of its capability of fighting the militants after the US withdrawal. I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts…

Victoria’s premier has announced that a statewide lockdown will remain in place until most residents are vaccinated, just days after Australia adopted new legislation giving sweeping surveillance and spy powers to police. Draconian measures covering the entire southeast Australian state will only start to be eased once 70% of the population receives at least one dose of the Covid vaccine, Premier Dan Andrews decreed on Wednesday. The government said it hoped to reach this target on or around September 23. In a written statement, Andrews claimed that lifting restrictions would “overrun” the state’s healthcare system. With a population of around…

Yemen’s allied defense forces have decisively escalated their counterattacks on Saudi Arabia’s allies in Ma’rib, the capital of a hugely strategic west-central Yemeni province of the same name, and are reportedly on the verge of recapturing the whole city. The Yemeni army and Popular Committees were reported on Tuesday to have advanced as far as the city’s “government buildings.” The advancements were made possible, despite heavy Saudi bombardment of the flashpoints in the city from above, Yemen Press Agency reported. It came after the forces successfully pushed back against the kingdom’s allies there, namely Riyadh-backed militants and al-Qaeda terrorists, the…

The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) governor says the bank is planning to issue deposit bonds, a new type of security approved by the lender’s Shariah advisory arm, as it seeks to contain inflation through reducing the amount of money supply in the country. Akbar Komeijani said on Tuesday that the CBI has been making preparations to issue the deposit bonds, or what will be locally known as Oragh Wadiaa. “We hope we can use this instrument this year (to March) to control money base and the inflation rate,” said Koemijani while addressing Iran’s Islamic Banking Conference, a annual gathering…

With the last US troops leaving Afghanistan after a devastating bombing, President Joe Biden has described the chaotic evacuation of Kabul as an “extraordinary success” the likes of which “no nation has done in all of history.” “Last night in Kabul, the US ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history,” Biden told reporters on Tuesday, almost a day after the last US plane took off from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. The retreat from Afghanistan didn’t just mark an end to that war, he said, but an end to an era of military operations “to remake other…

Scientists have discovered a tiny island off the coast of Greenland last month, describing it as the world’s northernmost point of land, revealed by shifting pack ice. Polar Explorer and Head of the Arctic Station Research Facility in Greenland, Morten Rasch, divulged that “it was not our intention to discover a new island,” adding “we just went there to collect samples.” The scientists initially believed they had arrived at Oodaaq, an island discovered in 1978 by a Danish survey team. When they checked the exact location, they discovered they had visited another island 780 meters to the northwest. “Everybody was happy that…

Drinking coffee has been associated with a number of health benefits, from a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease to a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. Simultaneously, a new study finds that drinking up to three cups of coffee per day may protect your heart. When compared to non-coffee drinkers, regular coffee consumption of 0.5 to 3 cups of coffee per day was associated with a lower risk of death from heart disease, stroke, and premature death from any cause. The study, which was presented Friday at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology, looked at the coffee-drinking habits of…