Month: July 2019

Afghan authorities say a car-bomb-and-gun attack in Kabul has killed at least two people and injured 25 others. Officials and witnesses said several heavily armed suicide bombers stormed a compound housing the office of Afghanistan Green Trend (AGT), a political movement headed by the country’s former spy chief, Amrullah Saleh.  Saleh is also a vice-presidential candidate of incumbent President Ashraf Ghani’s electoral team for the country’s upcoming election.   The incident occurred just hours after Ghani and Saleh attended an election rally in Kabul as the official campaign to elect news president of Afghanistan kicked off Sunday. The attack began …

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Twenty-two year old Egan Bernal was set to make history Sunday, as the first Colombian to win the Tour de France—and the youngest cyclist to place first in more than a century. The 2019 edition of the Tour de France was marked by high drama, including sharp weather swings and a crushing defeat for the French. Only towards the end did a clear winner emerge in Colombia’s Egan Bernal. Interviewed on French TV ahead Sunday’s final sprint from the town of Rambouillet to Paris, Bernal said he was still trying to digest the events. He said he felt good as …

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KUTUPALONG, BANGLADESH — A top-level Myanmar government delegation began repatriation talks with Rohingya leaders in a Bangladesh refugee camp on Saturday, an official said, with many of the Muslim minority fearing for their safety if they return home.    Some 740,000 Rohingya fled a 2017 crackdown by Myanmar’s military and are living in squalid conditions in camps in Bangladesh’s southeastern border district of Cox’s Bazar.    The two countries signed a repatriation deal in November 2017 but so far virtually no Rohingya have volunteered to go back to Myanmar, where the group has faced decades of repression.    The Myanmar team, …

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MAKINDYE-LUKULI, UGANDA  — The darkening clouds are ominous for many in this urban neighborhood, promising rushing rainwaters stinking of human waste from overflowing septic tanks.    As Africa faces a population boom unmatched anywhere else in the world, millions of people are moving to fast-growing cities while decades-old public facilities crumble under the pressure.      Sewage is a scourge for residents of this community on the outskirts of Uganda’s capital, Kampala. There are no public toilets for 1,200 people. Mud tinged with feces washes into homes during heavy rains.    The sanitation crisis echoes that of cities across the developing …

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Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson will keep his job as head of the Hayden Planetarium at New York’s American Museum of Natural History after the museum concluded its investigation into sexual misconduct accusations against him. A museum spokesman said in a statement Thursday that based on the results of the investigation, Tyson “remains an employee and director of the Hayden Planetarium.” The statement said museum officials would not comment further “because this is a confidential personnel matter.” Tyson was accused of behaving inappropriately with two women in an article published in November on the website Patheos. Fox Broadcasting and National Geographic …

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LAS VEGAS — Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi want their USA Basketball legacy to be more than just winning medals.    The four-time Olympic gold medalists came up with an idea for a training plan for USA Basketball leading up to next year’s Tokyo Olympics that would help the Americans go for an unprecedented seventh consecutive title: USA Basketball, which usually trains together only for short periods of time during a crowded calendar, would get a core group of eight players together for five training sessions over the next year. The players would be paid $2,000 a day at each …

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STOCKHOLM — Nordic countries are experiencing searing temperatures as Europe’s record-breaking heat wave moves north, with Norway on Saturday equaling its 1970 record and many areas recording “tropical nights.”    Laksfors in northern Norway on Saturday recorded a temperature of 35.6 degrees Celsius (96 degrees Fahrenheit), equaling the national record set in Nesbyen in 1970, the country’s meteorology service said on Twitter, adding, however, that the measuring station needed to be double-checked to ensure that it was operating properly.    The Norwegian Meteorological Institute also said it had recorded “tropical nights” in 20 different locations in southern Norway, meaning that temperatures stayed above 20 …

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