Flash floods wrought havoc in Bangladesh on Friday as the country recovers from weeks of political upheaval, with the death toll rising to 13 and millions more caught in the deluge. The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen frequent floods in recent decades. The annual monsoon rains cause widespread destruction every year, but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.
"It's a catastrophic situation here," rescue volunteer Zahed Hossain Bhuiya, 35, told AFP from the worst-hit city of Feni. "We are trying to rescue as many people as we can." Much of Bangladesh is made up of deltas where the Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, wind towards the sea after coursing through India .
All the major tributaries of the two transnational rivers were overflowing, according to local media reports. Nur Islam, a shopkeeper in Feni, said his home had been completely submerged. "Everything is underwater," the 60-year-old said.
Bangladesh's disaster management ministry said in a bulletin that the latest toll of 13 deaths included fatalities in cities along the country's southeastern coast. That included the main port city of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar, a district home to around a million Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar. Areas east of the capital Dhaka were also badly hit including the city of Comilla, near the border with Tripura state in India.
Nearly 190,000 others were taken to emergency relief shelters, according to the bulletin, while altogether 4.5 million people had been affected in some way. Altogether 11 of the country's 64 districts were affected by the flooding, the ministry said.
- Diplomatic tensions - The floods come less than three weeks after the ouster of ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who was forced to flee by helicopter to India, her government's biggest political patron, during a student-led uprising. Hasina's 15-year rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents. She was replaced by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is heading an interim government facing the monumental task of charting democratic reforms ahead of expected new elections .
Asif Mahmud, a leader of the student protests that ousted Hasina who is now in Yunus' caretaker cabinet, had earlier accused India of "creating a flood" by deliberately releasing water from dams. India's foreign ministry rejected the charge, saying its own catchment area had experienced the "heaviest rains of this year" this week, and that the flow of water downstream was due to "automatic releases". Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government backed Hasina's rule over her rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which it saw as closer to conservative Islamist groups.
Modi has offered his support to the Yunus administration. CNN's Scott Jennings conceded that Kamala Harris effectively introduced herself to voters in her acceptance speech, but his fellow panelists jumped all over his claims that Donald Trump remains in a strong position heading into next month's debate. The conservative commentator credited the vice president for her improved political skills and agreed the Democratic National Convention had been a success , but Jennings argued that she did not accept responsibility for the attacks Republicans have leveled at her tenure alongside president Joe Biden .
"She seemed plausible, this speech I agree, it did portray her as someone who sounded like a reasonable person," Jennings said. "Now, what she did not do was take any amount of responsibility for her current job, which is vice president of the United States for the last three-and-a-half years under Joe Biden. It was not an ounce of humility about the inflation gripping the country.
She talked about immigration without talking about all the things that happened right up until this border bill that they had hung all their hats on over at the Biden White House ." ALSO READ: Donald Trump exploits AP photo error for new $99 'Save America' book "So, to me, where the Republicans are going to be headed is all the pablum, all the platitudes," Jennings added, "all that aside you cannot leave the same people in charge if you believe that country's on the wrong track, if you believe they made all the mistakes on the economy and on immigration, you cannot leave the same people in charge that have run the country off into the ditch until she comes up with a good answer for that, which I suspect will have to be litigated at the debate on Sept. 10.
Donald Trump is still in a very good place." Former lawmaker Bakari Sellers disagreed, saying that the Republican nominee was no longer an effective candidate. "The problem that you have, however, is that, respectfully, to you and my brother, Shermichael [Singletone], who are oftentimes on that side of the table at this hour, is that you all are more disciplined of a messenger than Donald Trump is," Sellers said.
"Donald Trump has an inability at 78 years old to prosecute any message similar to what you're talking about, and we can debate, we can debate the merits of that, and I would love to debate the merits of immigration with you or inflation with your economic policy with you ...
but Donald Trump is not capable of that. He's a diminished individual." Former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams jumped in next, saying that Trump had his own record as commander-in-chief.
"I think your point's well taken, Scott, that by being in power for any number of years, oh, you're holding the bag," Williams said. "The problem with that is that you'd be getting the bag back to the person who had the bag before and part of the message was, do you wish to go back to that chaos and disorder?" Jennings pushed back, saying that Trump was as popular as he's ever been and the view of his presidency is as positive as it's ever been, but Biden's former White House communications director Kate Bedingfield argued that Harris had effectively defended her own record. "She didn't address [GOP criticisms] in the way that you, as a Republican strategist, would like to see her address them, but she did talk about immigration and she said, 'Hey, Donald Trump blew up our best option to make progress on this issue,'" Bedingfield said.
"So if you're an independent voter and you're trying to sort out left from right in this race you say, 'Oh, well, that seems like actually she's making a good point here.' Like, it's not that she didn't address these issues, it's that she actually took them on in a way that was smart and on the offensive." Watch below or click here.
- YouTube youtu.be Australia on Friday launched a multi-million dollar effort to stop pesticide runoff and other water quality issues on the Great Barrier Reef, the latest effort to save the ailing natural wonder. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek unveiled a US$130 million bid to reduce nutrient and pesticide runoff, improve invasive species management, and support better land management across some of the most vulnerable spots along the reef.
Often dubbed the world's largest living structure, the Great Barrier Reef is a 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) long expanse, home to a stunning array of biodiversity that includes more than 600 types of coral and 1,625 fish species. But repeated mass bleaching events -- when extreme heat saps the coral of nutrients and colour -- threaten the reef's fragile ecosystem. Mass bleaching events along the reef occurred in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and now 2024.
Such is the damage to the reef that the UN's cultural organization UNESCO has weighed labelling the world heritage site "at risk", a move that could put millions of tourist dollars at risk. Plibersek said the latest funding was vital to stop some of the other problems plaguing the ecosystem and "make sure the beauty and majesty of the Reef can be enjoyed for our kids and grandkids". "Sediment run-off is one of the biggest threats to the Great Barrier Reef," she said.
"Poor water quality stops coral from regrowing, kills seagrass, and blocks the sunlight needed for a healthy reef." - Beyond recovery? - This year's bleaching event has left 81 percent of the reef with extreme or high levels of damage -- one of the most severe and widespread on record, the latest government data shows. It will take scientists a few more months to determine how much of the reef is beyond recovery.
Coral bleaching occurs when water temperatures rise more than one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Australian Marine Conservation Society marine ecologist Lissa Schindler welcomed the government's funding boost but said more needed to be done to address the root cause of climate change.
Historically, investment had been spread thin across the reef rather than a targeted approach, she said. "Water pollution is one of the biggest threats to the reef outside of climate change," she told AFP. "The reef needs every bit of help it can get.
" But Australia, one of the world's largest gas and coal exporters, has only recently set targets to become carbon neutral. In the sweltering heat of India's Thar desert, where summer highs soar above 50 degrees Celsius, an architecturally striking school is an oasis of cool thanks to a combination of age-old techniques and modern design. The Rajkumari Ratnavati girls' school uses the same yellow sandstone as the 12th-century fort in nearby Jaisalmer, in India's western state of Rajasthan, dubbed the "golden city" due to the colour of the rock.
Like the fort, the school has thick rubble walls that help bounce back the heat, while the interior is plastered with lime, a porous material that regulates humidity and aids natural cooling. Unlike the ancient fort, its roof is lined with solar panels, which provide all the school's power in an area with frequent electricity cuts. Temperatures inside the school, designed by US-based architect Diana Kellogg and built by local artisans -- many of them parents of pupils -- can be as much as 20 percent lower than those outside.
"I love going to the school," said eight-year-old Khushboo Kumari, one of the 170 students. "The air feels as if it is coming from an AC." The school's classrooms are arranged around an open elliptical courtyard resembling a Roman coliseum, and walls with grids of vents create shade while allowing for cooling airflow.
Elevated windows allow hot air to escape as it rises. Rainwater is harvested from the flat roof. In some places, the walls are dotted with perforations -- a technique known as "jali" that was traditionally used for modesty, shielding women from view in the conservative society.
At the school, it is used to promote ventilation, creating a breeze channelled by the building's oval shape. "There is cross-ventilation," said school supervisor Rajinder Singh Bhati, aged 29. "The white tiles on the terrace reflect the sunlight.
" "It is totally eco-friendly." - 'Airy and cool' - India this year baked in its longest-ever heatwave, according to government weather experts. Temperatures surged above 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), with warnings people will face increasingly oppressive heat in the future.
Manohar Lal, 32, the father of pupil Khushboo, said students looked forward to class thanks to the relative cool. "There are frequent power cuts in Rajasthan, and children have to suffer as temperatures touch almost 50 degrees Celsius in summer," Lal said outside his modest home of mud and brick, which does not have a ceiling fan. "But there are no such worries in the school because it is powered by solar energy," he added.
"It is airy and cool, and that is why the children enjoy going to school". - 'Feels like heaven' - The school is supported by the US-based CITTA Education Foundation, meaning pupils attend for free in a state where the literacy rate for women is about 52 percent. Uniforms, school materials and lunch for pupils are also provided.
"It's a big thing that they are getting quality education free of cost, considering they can't even afford proper meals or clothing," said Hindi teacher Priyanka Chhangani, 40. Kellogg, the architect, said combining tradition with modern design and sustainable techniques was key. "Because the craftsmen were so familiar with the stone, we were able to integrate traditional architectural details along with indigenous heritage details, so that the structure felt authentic to the region", she said.
Her oval design was inspired by "feminine symbols of strength", she added. But while her design focused on tackling baking heat, it also faces an unexpected, climate change-driven problem -- floods. Intense rainfall during the annual monsoon is common from June to September, but experts say climate change is increasing its frequency and severity.
That increased rainfall has begun to impact the school, which was designed for a drier climate. This year, a long-dormant river was overflowing, washing away soil at one side of the school. Rajan Rawal, a professor at India's Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University, said the increasing intensity of rain was impacting buildings designed for other weather.
"Disasters like heat waves and floods impact the structural stability," Rawal said. They also affect the thermal performance of the building, he added. But teacher Chhangani said the school was still changing the lives of the pupils.
"These children don't even have fans at home," she said. "When they come to school, it feels like heaven to them.".
