Author: Gulf News Week

Doctors say President Donald Trump’s new executive order on vaccines is misguided and likely to stoke fear and confusion among parents at a time when measles is raging, immunization rates are falling and children are heading back to school. “Many families are finishing up that back-to-school checklist, and among those things is the medical checkup and assuring that their kids have their vaccines,” Michigan pediatrician Dr. Molly O’Shea said. “To put into question the safety or efficacy of these vaccines right now is really unfortunate and ill-conceived.” The order, signed Monday, advocates separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine…

Scammers busted in Southeast Asia’s biggest ghost townFrom a distance, Malaysia’s Forest City looks 3D-printed: a bristle of identical white blocks clustered on an otherwise unremarkable coastline.When it was unveiled by Chinese developers in 2016, the $100bn mega-project was pitched as “a dream paradise for all mankind”: a special financial zone that could house some 700,000 residents. But a decade later, this 14-sq-km (3,400-acre) artificial island on Singapore’s doorstep is thought to be inhabited by less than 1% of that.Rows of eerily vacant skyscrapers loom over quiet streets. Inside empty apartments, benchtops and windows are filmed with dust.”In 2016 they…

Anadolu via Getty ImagesRodríguez and Ronaldo in Dubai in 2024Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has married his longtime partner – model and influencer Georgina Rodríguez – in a civil ceremony in Portugal.The Portuguese striker posted an image on his Instagram account showing two hands – presumed to be his on top of his wife’s – both wearing wedding rings.Calling it the wedding of the year, Portuguese media say the couple tied the knot on 11 August in the coastal town of Cascais near Lisbon – and that their five children attended.The Instagram entry had more than 3m likes within 30 minutes…

Watch: Moment powerful earthquake shakes Colombia and crumbles buildingsRescue workers in Colombia are working against the clock to free survivors trapped in buildings and under rubble following Monday’s powerful earthquake. More than 180 people have been confirmed dead – most in the cities of Cali and Pereira. The magnitude 7.4 quake struck at 07:34 (12:34 GMT) on Monday and was felt across an enormous area, stretching for hundreds of miles across western Colombia – with fresh aftershocks still being felt on Tuesday. While the official death toll remains 181, an aggregated figure gathered from local officials puts it higher -…

Watch: President Trump secretly switches planes to avoid Iran threat”I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first.”That was President Donald Trump’s observation, made to ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl, in a phone conversation the day after he launched the US military campaign against Iran in FebruaryAn Israeli airstrike, conducted with US approval and co-ordination, had just killed the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian leaders – and Trump drew a direct line from that attack to threats and alleged plots the Iranians had made against him in previous years.Trump has refrained from similar…

AFP via Getty ImagesA woman wades through floodwaters outside her inundated house at a village in Assam’s Sivasagar Well past midnight on 19 July, as floodwaters surged through a village in India’s northeastern state of Assam, Bornali Baruah and her husband were trying to save his 97-year-old mother.Almost bedridden, Lokada Duarah could not walk. There was no boat, no rescue team and no neighbour available to help. So they lifted her onto a makeshift raft made of banana trunks, and carried her through the rushing water towards safety.”Everyone was trying to save themselves,” Baruah says.An hour later, she says, the…

Cnews agenciesE CANAVERAL, Fla. (news agencies) — Sorry, North America. After winning the cosmic lottery with a pair of coast-to-coast total solar eclipses, now it’s Europe’s turn.But look skyward anyway Wednesday and, if you’re far enough north in the U.S. and Canada, you might savor a partial eclipse as the moon nibbles away at the sun.Totality will begin near the North Pole, then streak southward across Greenland, Iceland, Spain and a patch of Portugal. Daytime darkness won’t last more than a couple minutes at best — shrimpy compared with North America’s epic 2024 eclipse — but it is continental Europe’s…

BBCLeft to right: Ricky Gervais as David Brent, Martin Freeman as Tim, MacKenzie Crook as Gareth and Lucy Davis as Dawn in The OfficeLucy Davis, who played Dawn Tinsley in the original UK version of The Office, has revealed she has “incurable” breast cancer.Davis, the daughter of comedian Jasper Carrott, appeared frequently as the sympathetic and witty office receptionist in the groundbreaking mockumentary, from 2001 to 2003.A post from the 53-year-old actress on Instagram on Tuesday said: “I wanted to share something with you all that I’ve kept to myself for a while but for various reasons would like to…

BBC News MundoAt the scene of the rescue, workers and volunteers hold their hands in air in a symbol for silence, allowing survivors to be heard Efraín Gallego does not lose faith that his brother will be found alive, although when he speaks about him, trapped beneath the rubble of a building, his voice breaks and he swallows hard until he regains his composure.”You feel anguish. Every time there is an alert about someone being alive, hope is reborn that we will find him,” Gallego tells me emotionally.His 80-year-old brother was buried along with his wife when the Torres del…

Watch: Was Donald Trump smuggled out of Air Force One in a catering truck?On 8 July, US President Donald Trump boarded Air Force One in plain sight of television cameras as he departed the Nato summit in Turkey.But when the mighty Boeing aircraft left Ankara, the president had reportedly already been secretly spirited away via a catering truck to a C-32A, a military version of the Boeing 757, which flew the president to RAF Mildenhall in the UK.Those left on board were unwitting decoys and had no indication that Trump was no longer travelling with them. But deception of this…