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AdvertisementEuropean UnionWorldEurope5 EU nations plan to send rejected migrants to non-EU ‘return hubs’, target 2027Rights groups have criticised the plan, arguing that European nations cannot guarantee the rights of migrants would be respected
3-MIN READ3-MIN ListenAssociated PressPublished: 11:55pm, 4 Sep 2026Denmark and four other European Union countries agreed on Friday on a model for “return hubs” in non-EU nations and hope to begin sending migrants to the facilities as early as 2027, an official said.The announcement, made after a one-day meeting in Copenhagen, is the latest development in an effort by EU states to send people whose asylum requests have been rejected to third countries outside the bloc.
“We are moving forward towards what is actually a fundamental transformation of the common European migration and asylum system,” said Morten Bodskov, Denmark’s minister of immigration and integration.
He briefed reporters alongside counterparts from Germany, the Netherlands, A..

As Beijing and Moscow double down on the Arctic shipping route, Europe is hitting the brakes.
Despite being the main destination for goods along the route and accounting for most of the world’s shipping giants, Europe opposes the commercialisation of Arctic transits, wary of fragile polar ecosystems and navigational risks amid rising anxiety over Russia and China’s closer polar collaboration.
“In Europe, cooperation between China and Russia on container shipping is often viewed as another…

A flat plateau once damaged by mountaintop removal coal mining has been given a new purpose as the site of a consolidated high school designed to become an educational centre for central Appalachia. The newly built, 200,000-square-foot Southern Gap High School was officially opened during a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Buchanan County, Virginia, according to a report by the Virginia Mountaineer. The £60 million facility replaces four older local schools, bringing students from across the county together on one central campus built on a reclaimed ridge. Designed by VMDO Architects, the campus sits on land once used for heavy industrial activity. The project aims to respond to changes in the rural population and aging school buildings by bringing resources together in one modern facility.Transforming an extracted landscapeBuchanan County has long depended on coal mining, with mountaintop removal changing the area's landscape over several decades. According to project documents from VM..

This entire town in California is on sale again. Campo, an entire town in California, just an hour away from San Diego, has been on sale for years. Now the price has hit its lowest as it did not get any luck. The town has its own local post office, a border patrol facility, a church, a VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) post, 27 apartments and a hardware store. This isn't the first time Campo has hit the market. The town was listed in 2019 and again in 2024, when it was priced at $6.5 million before being taken off the market. Now it's again on the market with a price of $5,995,000.The current owner, John Ray, has owned the town for 22 years. According to 10News, Ray said he hasn't had the time to develop the property, and so far, it hasn't sold. The listing agent, Nick Hernandez, said the sale covers a specific portion of the area. “It's bringing in about forty thousand a month in current rents,” Nick said.The parcels for sale are not considered historical land, a..

AdvertisementHong Kong healthcare and hospitalsHong KongSocietyJust 4 of 28 lifts at Queen Mary Hospital block set for service once repairs doneArchitectural Services Department says remaining lifts had suffered frequent operational instability and requires urgent follow‑up
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenDanny MokPublished: 11:34pm, 3 Sep 2026Only four of the 28 lifts at Queen Mary Hospital’s new clinical block will operate normally following minor repairs, while work must be carried out on the rest until the end of the year, according to Hong Kong’s architectural authorities.
The Architectural Services Department said on Thursday only four lifts serving non‑clinical facilities at the HK$13.5 billion (US$1.72 billion) block were in acceptable condition and would undergo minor repairs later.
The remaining lifts had suffered frequent operational instability and required urgent follow‑up, it added.
The department expected work to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year.
The block, part of ..

AdvertisementHong KongHong KongSocietyHong Kong Nepalese man searches for cousin missing in flood: ‘I cannot sleep’Y.B. Gurung said he last spoke with his cousin shortly before massive glacial collapse and was asking Chinese embassy for help
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenKristen CheungandEric JiangPublished: 11:23pm, 3 Sep 2026Updated: 12:21am, 4 Sep 2026A Hong Kong Nepalese man is searching for his cousin who is missing after the catastrophic flood struck the Himalayan border between Nepal and Tibet.
Y.B. Gurung, a 64-year-old retiree, told the South China Morning Post that he last spoke with his tour guide cousin Raju Gurung, 40, at 8am on August 26, shortly before a massive glacial collapse triggered the flash flood that washed away villages and left at least 1,225 people dead.
“I cannot sleep every night. I am praying every day that he was rescued,” Gurung said on Thursday.
At the time of the disaster, his cousin was leading a 42-member team on a pilgrimage into Tibet.
The family has tried..

From a cabbage to a £4 million mansion! (Photo: SWNS) A father who once won nothing more than a cabbage in a 1977 meat draw has now landed a dramatically bigger prize – a £4 million Georgian mansion in Bath, Somerset, along with £250,000 in cash.According to SWNS, Wayne Wood, 64, from Loughborough, Leicestershire, and his wife Catherine, 53, won the historic property through an Omaze prize draw. The couple, who have been married for 18 years and have two teenage children, will also receive the property mortgage-free, with stamp duty and legal fees covered, as well as £140,000 worth of furnishings.From a cabbage to a £4 million mansionWayne Wood’s cabbage win got a major upgrade. (Photo: SWNS)Wayne said his previous prize was a cabbage, which he won nearly five decades ago after entering a meat draw with friends.“A £4 million mansion is quite the upgrade from a cabbage!” he said.“I remember I was with my brass band friends on a trip somewhere up north in the 70s and we all entered a mea..

When America's commander-in-chief President Donald Trump announced US strikes on Iran under the ambitious Operation Epic Fury in the early hours of February 28, there was little ambiguity about what Washington wanted from the campaign.This was not supposed to become another open-ended Middle Eastern war. The objective was to unleash overwhelming American military power, destroy Iran’s most dangerous capabilities, force Tehran to accept Washington’s terms and leave behind an Iran weakened enough that it could no longer pose the same strategic threat.Trump also appeared confident that the campaign would be relatively short. After his intervention in Venezuela earlier in 2026, he suggested that the war could last four or five weeks. Within days, he was already claiming that the military campaign was running ahead of schedule.“We're already substantially ahead of our time projections,” Trump said on March 2, just days after the campaign began, while adding that whatever time the ..

AdvertisementVietnamAsiaSoutheast AsiaVietnam arrests deputy minister over probe into huge bribesTran Van Thuan’s arrest comes as police investigate a scheme involving ‘smuggling’ and reselling of medical equipment at inflated prices
1-MIN READ1-MIN ListenAgence France-PressePublished: 11:24pm, 2 Sep 2026Vietnamese police arrested a deputy health minister on Wednesday for allegedly accepting huge bribes, part of an investigation into a company accused of smuggling medical equipment, authorities said.
Vietnam has pursued a high-profile anti-corruption campaign in recent years that has netted dozens of business leaders and senior government figures.Deputy Health Minister Tran Van Thuan, a leading oncologist in Vietnam, was taken into custody “due to his acceptance of bribes involving a large sum of money”, the public security ministry said in a statement, without specifying the amount.
Thuan, 56, was appointed deputy health minister in 2020 and chairman of the National Medical Council in..

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, said on Wednesday that an Iranian ‌attack on an oil tanker owned by its national shipping company had killed two Filipino seafarers.
Sidr, owned by Bahri, was one of two supertankers carrying Saudi oil reported to have been hit late on Monday while transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Tehran has threatened tankers attempting ⁠to sail through the narrow waterway without authorisation, impeding energy exports from neighbouring ‌oil-rich Gulf…