At least 7 dead as severe winds, tornadoes hammer US South

Update At least 7 dead as severe winds, tornadoes hammer US South
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A man examines his former rental home at 1349 County Road 43 in the aftermath from severe weather, on Jan. 12, 2023, in Prattville, Alabama. (AP)
Update At least 7 dead as severe winds, tornadoes hammer US South
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All that remains of a house on County Road 43 in Prattville, Alabama, is the foundation after a tornado on Jan. 12, 2023. (AP)
Update At least 7 dead as severe winds, tornadoes hammer US South
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All that remains of a house on County Road 43 in Prattville, Alabama, is the foundation after a tornado on Jan. 12, 2023. (AP)
Update At least 7 dead as severe winds, tornadoes hammer US South
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Devastation is seen in the aftermath from severe weather on Jan. 12, 2023, in Greensboro, Alabama. (Mike Goodall via AP)
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Updated 13 January 2023
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At least 7 dead as severe winds, tornadoes hammer US South

At least 7 dead as severe winds, tornadoes hammer US South
  • Officials estimate that 40 to 50 homes were damaged or destroyed by storms that cut a strip across the county
  • At least 12 people were injured severely enough to be taken to hospitals by emergency responders

SELMA, Alabama: A massive storm system whipping up severe winds and spawning tornadoes cut a path across the US South, killing at least seven people in Georgia and Alabama, where a twister damaged buildings and tossed cars in the streets of historic downtown Selma.
Authorities said a clearer picture of the extent of the damage and a search for additional victims would come Friday, when conditions were expected to clear. After the storm began easing Thursday night, tens of thousands of customers were without power across the two states.
In Selma, a city etched in the history of the civil rights movement, the city council used lights from cellphones as they held a meeting on the sidewalk to declare a state of emergency.
Six of the deaths were recorded Autauga County, Alabama, 41 miles (66 kilometers) northeast of Selma, where an estimated 40 homes were damaged or destroyed by a tornado that cut a 20-mile (32-kilometer) path across two rural communities, said Ernie Baggett, the county’s emergency management director.
At least 12 people were injured severely enough to be taken to hospitals by emergency responders, Baggett told The Associated Press. He said crews were focused Thursday night on cutting through downed trees to look for people who may need help.
“This is the worst that I’ve seen here in this county,” Baggett said of the damage.
In Georgia, a passenger died when a tree fell on a vehicle in Jackson, Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue said. In the same county southeast of Atlanta, the storm appeared to have knocked a freight train off its tracks, officials said.
 

Officials in Griffin, south of Atlanta, told local news outlets that multiple people had been trapped inside an apartment complex after trees fell on it. A Hobby Lobby store in the city partially lost its roof, while elsewhere in town firefighters cut a man loose who had been pinned for hours under a tree that fell on his house. The city imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. Thursday to 6 a.m. Friday.
Nationwide, there were 33 separate tornado reports from the National Weather Service on Thursday, and Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina all saw tornado warnings for a time. The tornado reports were not yet confirmed and some of them could later be classified as wind damage after assessments are done in coming days.
The tornado that hit Selma cut a wide path through the downtown area, where brick buildings collapsed, oak trees were uprooted, cars were on their side and power lines were left dangling. Plumes of thick, black smoke rose over the city from a fire burning. It wasn’t immediately known whether the storm caused the blaze.
Selma Mayor James Perkins said no fatalities have been reported, but several people were seriously injured. First responders were continuing to assess the damage and officials hoped to get an aerial view of the city Friday morning.
“We have a lot of downed power lines,” he said. “There is a lot of danger on the streets.”
Mattie Moore was among Selma residents who picked up boxed meals offered by a charity downtown.
“Thank God that we’re here. It’s like something you see on TV,” Moore said of all the destruction.

A city of about 18,000 people, Selma is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Montgomery, the Alabama capital. It was a flashpoint of the civil rights movement and where Alabama state troopers viciously attacked Black people advocating for voting rights as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.
Malesha McVay took video of the giant twister, which would turn black as it swept away home after home.
“It would hit a house, and black smoke would swirl up,” she said. “It was very terrifying.”
About 40,000 customers were without power in Alabama on Thursday night, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. In Georgia, about 86,000 customers were without electricity after the storm system carved a path across a tier of counties just south of Atlanta.
School systems in at least six Georgia counties canceled classes on Friday. Those systems enroll a total of 90,000 students.
In Kentucky, the National Weather Service in Louisville confirmed that an EF-1 tornado struck Mercer County and said crews were surveying damage in a handful of other counties.
Three factors — a natural La Nina weather cycle, warming of the Gulf of Mexico likely related to climate change and a decades-long shift of tornadoes from the west to east — came together to make Thursday’s tornado outbreak unusual and damaging, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University who studies tornado trends.
The La Nina, a cooling of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide, was a factor in making a wavy jet stream that brought a cold front through, Gensini said. But that’s not enough for a tornado outbreak. What’s needed is moisture.
Normally the air in the Southeast is fairly dry this time of year but the dew point was twice what is normal, likely because of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is likely influenced by climate change. That moisture hit the cold front and everything was in place, Gensini said.


Bus falls from Venice bridge, ‘many victims’, mayor says

Bus falls from Venice bridge, ‘many victims’, mayor says
Updated 6 sec ago
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Bus falls from Venice bridge, ‘many victims’, mayor says

Bus falls from Venice bridge, ‘many victims’, mayor says
  • Many victims after bus fell from bridge onto dry land

ROME: A bus fell from a Venice bridge Tuesday night, resulting in “many victims,” the mayor of the northern Italian city said.
“A tragedy has struck our community this evening,” resulting in “many victims among those present on the bus that fell” from a bridge near Mestre, on dry land, mayor Luigi Brugnaro wrote on Facebook, describing it as “an apocalyptic scene.”


UK migration adviser: Scrap special visa rules for shortage occupations

UK migration adviser: Scrap special visa rules for shortage occupations
Updated 03 October 2023
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UK migration adviser: Scrap special visa rules for shortage occupations

UK migration adviser: Scrap special visa rules for shortage occupations
  • The Migration Advisory Committee said making it easier to recruit low-wage workers increased the risk of exploitation
  • Employers can hire migrant workers at 80 percent of a job’s usual “going rate” in Britain for occupations on the list

LONDON: The British government’s independent migration adviser on Tuesday recommended abolishing one of the main routes for businesses to hire migrant workers in sectors where there are severe staff shortages.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which was commissioned to conduct a review of the Shortage Occupation List (SOL), said making it easier to recruit low-wage workers increased the risk of exploitation.
Business lobby groups have previously called for the government to expand the number of occupations on the list to help firms facing significant issues recruiting staff post-Brexit.
But the committee also said low-wage migrants were more likely to result in a net fiscal cost for Britain, and the high administrative burdens of the scheme made it uneconomic for many businesses.
“These concerns mean that we are not convinced that the SOL provides a sensible immigration solution to shortage issues in low-wage sectors, and so our preference is for the government to abolish it,” the committee said in a report.
Employers can hire migrant workers at 80 percent of a job’s usual “going rate” in Britain for occupations on the list, which includes roles such as bricklayers and care workers.
Being a shortage occupation can allow employers to bypass the general minimum salary threshold for a skilled worker visa of 26,200 pounds ($31,610), meaning sectors with a going rate below that level particularly benefited from being on the list, MAC said.
MAC recommended no employer should be able to pay below the going rate, which it said helped to protect resident workers from undercutting and reduced the exploitation of migrants.
A spokesperson for Britain’s Home Office said the government would consider the findings of the report and respond “in due course.”
MAC said in future it could instead examine individual occupations or sectors with particularly acute labor market issues, looking at how far immigration policy is helpful, and focussing on changes to things such as wages, training and investment in technology.
The committee said these actions were “likely to be a more sustainable response to the problems.”


KSrelief launches eye treatment program for 30,000 Bangladeshi schoolchildren

KSrelief launches eye treatment program for 30,000 Bangladeshi schoolchildren
Updated 03 October 2023
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KSrelief launches eye treatment program for 30,000 Bangladeshi schoolchildren

KSrelief launches eye treatment program for 30,000 Bangladeshi schoolchildren
  • More than 6 million Bangladeshis have benefited from KSrelief’s aid projects
  • Campaign is part of KSrelief’s ophthalmological interventions in Bangladesh

DHAKA: The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center launched on Tuesday a medical campaign in Dhaka to treat tens of thousands of Bangladeshi schoolchildren suffering from eye disease.

The campaign is part of KSrelief’s ophthalmological interventions in Bangladesh, where volunteer doctors from Saudi Arabia help Bangladeshis retain or regain their eyesight. The center’s Saudi Noor Volunteer Program, which was held in May, reached more than 4,700 people.

“Helping to reduce the rate of blindness and visual impairments in Bangladesh has been (a) top priority for (the) King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center,” Dr. Aqeel Al-Ghamdi, KSrelief’s assistant supervisor-general for planning and development, told reporters as he launched the program in Dhaka.

The campaign will start with training teachers, as they will be the first to identify students who need help.

“The screening program is in 50 schools in Dhaka. It will cover around 30,000 students. This morning, we visited one of the high schools, and we started the program there. They will screen around 1,000 students in the next three days,” Al-Ghamdi told Arab News.

Under the program, KSrelief will provide glasses for students who need them, while those who may require more medical assistance will be sent to doctors.

“It will change a lot for the students in their academic activity (and) in their life, actually. In this program, I hope the best for the students,” Al-Ghamdi said.

Saudi Ambassador to Bangladesh Essa Al-Duhailan said during the event that the medical campaign also illustrates the wide-ranging scope of Saudi-Bangladesh relations.

“Our relationship is a multidimensional relationship. It’s not only concentrated in manpower and Hajj and Umrah visits, but it is more than this,” he told reporters.

KSrelief provides humanitarian and development support to millions of beneficiaries in 94 countries. More than 6 million people have received the center’s assistance in Bangladesh, where 52 projects worth about $25 million have been conducted since 2015.


Kremlin says Russia has not abandoned moratorium on nuclear testing

Kremlin says Russia has not abandoned moratorium on nuclear testing
Updated 03 October 2023
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Kremlin says Russia has not abandoned moratorium on nuclear testing

Kremlin says Russia has not abandoned moratorium on nuclear testing
  • Russia may be preparing to test an experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia had not abandoned a moratorium on nuclear testing, and dismissed a suggestion by one commentator that it should detonate a thermonuclear bomb.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not know where New York Times reporters had got the idea that Russia may be preparing to test an experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile, or may have recently tested one.
Margarita Simonyan, hawkish editor-in-chief of the state-owned broadcaster RT, suggested in an interview extract posted online by the foreign-based digital broadcast network RTVI that Russia should detonate a nuclear bomb at high altitude over Siberia as a warning to the West.


Nobel laureate engages young Indians in movement to ‘globalize compassion’

Nobel laureate engages young Indians in movement to ‘globalize compassion’
Updated 03 October 2023
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Nobel laureate engages young Indians in movement to ‘globalize compassion’

Nobel laureate engages young Indians in movement to ‘globalize compassion’
  • Summit on human fraternity, compassion attracts 600 youth leaders
  • Younger generation can protect humanity, planet: Kailash Satyarthi

VIRATNAGAR, RAJASTHAN, India: Indian Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi has called on India’s youth leaders to help promote and nurture compassion and human fraternity.

Satyarthi, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people, launched over the weekend the Youth Summit on Human Fraternity and Compassion.

The event in Viratnagar, Rajasthan, co-organized by the Satyarthi Movement for Global Compassion and the UAE-based Zayed Award for Human Fraternity, attracted 600 youth leaders from different parts of India to discuss initiatives for unity and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

“Young people have a tremendous capacity to make this world a better place. They can protect humanity as well as the planet. It’s because they are much more genuine and much more honest,” Satyarthi told Arab News.

“We realized that when we dream to make this world a better, peaceful, much more humane, sustainable place, then it should be led by the young people. And therefore, this new movement is being started and that is the movement for global compassion.

“We need connectivity, we need unison, we need a moral responsibility, accountability, and a moral compass to lead our world, and therefore this summit is being held.”

For Mohamed Abdelsalam, secretary-general of the Zayed Award for Human Fraternity, it was important to spread the efforts in India, given its cultural, ethnic, and religious heterogeneity.

“The Indian community faces many challenges at present and that’s why it is telling these values of global compassion and human potential are very important in addressing these challenges to make sure that this community, the Indian people, will be able to prosper and live with the spirit of living together as one harmonious nation,” he told Arab News.

“My message is for us to create more space for peace and dialogue for young people. As individuals, as leaders, as governments, as institutions, we have to fight to ensure that these young people have this spirit.”

The way the summit’s participants were chosen reflected India’s diversity.

“We set some criteria for the selection of the young leaders and the participants,” he said.

“Top of these was to select people coming from different cultures, different parts in India, different faiths, and different ethnicities, and bring them together to give them a role model of understanding each other and building peace among them so they go out of this event and spread the message of peace nationwide and worldwide.”