Author: DW

Three men and two women have been killed during a fire in a largely residential building in Hong Kong. Another 27 people have been left injured. At least six of them are in a serious condition and one is critical, Hong Kong’s hospital authority said. Firefighters rushed to the New Lucky House in the Jordan neighbourhood after being called at around 7.53am local time on Wednesday, authorities said.The fire was extinguished by 9am local time, but police said people could still be heard calling for help from inside the 16-storey building. Image: Pic: AP People waved towels at their windows…

Voters across Poland cast ballots in local elections on Sunday four months after the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk took power, ending eight years of conservative nationalist rule in the country. Nearly 190,000 candidates are vying for positions as mayors and councilors across the nation of 38 million people. Recent voter surveys have shown a close race is likely between Tusk’s Civic Coalition and Law and Justice (PiS), the conservative party that governed the country from 2015. Voter turnout at 1500 GMT was 39.4%, the country’s electoral commission said. As polls closed in the evening, initial returns suggested that PiS had taken 33.7% of the vote, bettering…

Dogs are man’s best friend nowadays but humans once kept an unexpected pet, new research suggests. In what has been labelled a “rare and unusual find,” scientists have discovered the bones of an extinct fox and found evidence that the animal shared “a strong bond” with humans. Analysis of 1,500-year-old skeletal remains from a burial site in Argentinian Patagonia suggest the Dusicyon avus, or the Falkland Islands wolf, was “a valuable companion to the hunter-gatherer groups”.The bones are from a single animal while the human remains buried with it come from 21 individuals.A lack of cut marks on the bones…

Greece on Sunday raised the wildfire alert level for several regions to “high risk” — the second-highest —  after more than 70 forest fires were reported across the country on Saturday. Although most were brought under control, one on the island of Crete was still burning on Sunday, the fire department said, adding that three people had been lightly injured in the blaze. High winds expected On Saturday, “71 fires were declared in agricultural and forestry regions across the country in 12 hours, between 0300 GMT and 1500 GMT,” said the Civil Protection Ministry, which is also in charge of responses to…

The grinding misery in Yemen just got worse. Yet while their own suffering goes on in virtual silence, hundreds of thousands still protest in towns across the country about the Israeli bombing in Gaza.Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, has found itself thrust into the centre of the war on Gaza.As if that wasn’t unlikely enough, the Houthi militants who control the bulk of the Yemeni population through a combination of force, fear and extensive outside help from Iran, are now being viewed by many as heroes.The Houthi actions in wreaking havoc on global shipping routes in…

Missouri authorities executed on Tuesday a 52-year-old murderer convicted of killing his cousin and her husband almost two decades ago, despite appeals to grant him clemency. Brian Dorsey received a single-dose lethal injection at the state prison in Bonne Terre. His execution was the first in Missouri this year and the fifth in the United States. He was convicted of shooting and killing his cousin Sarah Bonnie, and her husband Ben, on December 23, 2006 at their home, where they had taken him in after he sought to borrow money to pay two drug dealers. Their then 4-year-old daughter was…

Ecuador’s former Vice President Jorge Glas was back in prison on Tuesday, after being hospitalized a day earlier, amid growing angry reactions to his arrest. Glas, formerly convicted of corruption and facing fresh charges, was arrested during a highly controversial raid on the Mexican Embassy in Quito last weekend, where he was seeking refuge.Mexico to cut ties with Ecuador after embassy stormedTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video What do we know about Glas’ health? The Ecuadorian SNAI prisons agency said the former vice president was returned to prison…

Europe’s top human rights court has sided with a 2,000-strong group of elderly women who said Switzerland’s government had not done enough to combat climate change. Senior Women for Climate Protection, whose average age is 74, say older women’s rights are especially infringed on because they are most affected by the extreme heat that will become more frequent due to global warming. This is the first time the court has ruled on climate change.Judgments from the European Court of Human Rights are not legally binding for all 46 of the European Council’s member states, but they set a legal precedent…

Insults, hostility, and hate speech are a major problem in public spaces and on social networks. Governments around the world are seeking to take firmer legal action against these phenomena. Germany, for example, introduced the Network Enforcement Act in 2017. The European Parliament has called for a more forceful prosecution of hate crimes throughout the EU. Initially, then, it appeared to be a good thing that the Scottish government had decided to tighten the existing regulations. What are the rules in Scotland? The new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into force on April 1. It extends existing regulations, in that racially motivated acts…

Yemen’s fishermen set out at dawn to take on seas where they know they could face pirates, smugglers, and now Houthi militant missile attacks.”We’re always scared,” Awad tells us as he sits on the edge of the wooden fishing boat. “Because you don’t know when you will be attacked.”The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden have become the new battleground in the spreading war in Gaza.Houthi missiles targeting international shipping routes have caused havoc to global trade, led to a rise in food prices and brought heightened misery to the Yemenis who rely on the waters for their livelihoods.…