Author: Gulf News Week

WASHINGTON (news agencies) — After deadly flooding in central Texas in 1987, some thought they’d proven they could handle Mother Nature’s best punch. Then came this month’s horrific flash floods, when unfathomable amounts of rain fell in only hours and more than 100 people died.Before 2021, the typically temperate Pacific Northwest and western Canada seemed highly unlikely to get a killer heat wave, but they did. Tropical Hawaii once felt an ocean away from drought-fueled wildfires, until it wasn’t. And many in inland North Carolina figured hurricanes were a coastal problem until the remnants of Helene blew in last year.Climate…

Jack Nicholson did not want to go to the Oscars. It was 1976 and he was nominated for best actor in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The Miloš Forman film, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a nationwide theatrical re-release on July 13 and July 16, had become a bit of a sensation — the second highest grossing picture of 1975, behind “Jaws,” and had received nine Oscar nominations.But Nicholson wasn’t feeling optimistic. In five years, he’d already been nominated five times. He’d also lost five times. And he told his producer, Michael Douglas, that he couldn’t go…

Catastrophic floods can be difficult to prepare for. Sometimes evacuation is the right call, but if it’s too late the best bet is to find higher ground nearby. The stakes can be high, because a flash flood may give those in its path only minutes or seconds to react.The right moves depend on the storm and the geography, said James Doss-Gollin, an assistant professor who teaches civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. For example, the advice won’t be the same for people who live near a beach and those who live by a river, he said.“Some places you’re worried…

Rubio and Lavrov ‘confirmed their mutual desire to find peaceful solutions to conflicts’, Russian Foreign Ministry says.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio have held rare face-to-face talks on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Malaysia, discussing the war in Ukraine, as well as developments in Iran and Syria. “A substantive and frank exchange of views took place on the settlement of the situation around Ukraine, the situation around Iran and Syria, as well as a number of other international issues,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting on Thursday in…

Masafer Yatta villagers had their land deemed a military zone, and the Israeli army is trying to demolish their homes.Israeli soldiers bound Mohamed Yousef’s hands behind his back as they dragged him to a military camp near the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian villages in Hebron governorate, in late June. With him were his mother, his wife and two sisters, arrested on their land for confronting armed Israeli settlers. Settlers often graze their animals on Palestinian land to assert control, signal unrestricted access and lay the groundwork for establishing illegal outposts, cutting Palestinians off from their…

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (news agencies) — Israeli strikes pounded the Gaza Strip Wednesday night and Thursday, killing at least 34 Palestinians, including 10 people waiting for care outside a medical clinic, according to local hospitals and aid workers. The Israeli military also announced a soldier was killed in Gaza.The fighting in Gaza has shown no sign of slowing as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Donald Trump in Washington this week to work on a U.S.-led ceasefire plan. Hopes for an agreement in the near term appeared to be fading as Netanyahu prepared to return to Israel.Netanyahu is…

Centre StageProgress, Secularism and the Orientalist GazeOlivier Roy, a professor of Orientalism, joins Centre Stage to talk about the roots of Orientalism and the enduring myth of how only the West represents progress. From colonial-era narratives to modern-day politics, Roy explores how the Global South is still perceived through a Eurocentric lens — and what that says about our civilisation, modernity and the West’s ongoing struggle with pluralism. This episode is produced in partnership with the International Conference on Orientalism, an intellectual and academic platform that brings together leading scholars in the field to foster informed dialogue towards a balanced…

President Donald Trump expressed his disdain for wind power during a meeting with his Cabinet recently, calling it an expensive form of energy that “smart” countries don’t use. His comments on Tuesday contained false and misleading information about the use of wind power in the United States and around the world, and came on the heels of an executive order he signed Monday that would end subsidies around “green” energy.Here’s a look at the facts.CLAIM: “Wind is a very expensive form of energy.”THE FACTS: Onshore wind is one of the cheapest sources of electricity generation, with new wind farms expected…

Iran links future IAEA cooperation to impartiality, after deadly June conflict with Israel and US.Iran’s president has warned the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to abandon its “double standards” if it hopes to restore cooperation over the country’s nuclear programme, amid an acute mistrust following Israel and the United States’ attacks on Iranian nuclear sites last month, and the UN nuclear watchdog’s refusal to condemn the strikes. Speaking to European Council President Antonio Costa by phone on Thursday, President Masoud Pezeshkian said, “The continuation of Iran’s cooperation with the agency depends on the latter correcting its double standards regarding the…

GENEVA (news agencies) — Two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday in her seven-year legal fight against track and field’s sex eligibility rules.The court’s 17-judge highest chamber said in a 15-2 vote that Semenya had some of her rights to a fair hearing violated at Switzerland’s Supreme Court, where she had appealed against a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in favor of track’s World Athletics.Her case should now go back to the Swiss federal court in Lausanne — to be watched closely by other sports…