Yemeni historic buildings damaged due to torrential rainfall

Workers demolish a building damaged by rain in the UNESCO World Heritage site of the old city of Sanaa, Yemen, on August 11. According to reports, torrential rains and associated floods ongoing for a week in Yemen have caused large damage in the old city of Sanaa, inscribed by UNESCO on the World Heritage List in 1986, leaving four historic buildings collapsed and another 111 damaged partially. The old city has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years and is made up of nearly 6,000 buildings, including distinctive multi-story tower houses.SD-Agencies

Flooding, heavy rainfall leave 60 dead in Sudan

Flash floods have ravaged swaths of Sudan for weeks, leaving at least 60 people dead and destroying thousands of homes since late July, authorities and the U.N. humanitarian agency said on Sunday.

The flooding also injured two dozen people, and has destroyed or damaged more than 30,000 houses nationwide, the country’s Interior Ministry said.

More than 185,000 people in all but one of Sudan’s 18 provinces have been affected by the heavy rainfall and flooding, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The floods also damaged at least 14 schools.

France plans masks at work as virus cases rise

France is to propose that masks be worn in shared work spaces as the country grapples with a rebound in coronavirus cases that rose again in the past 24 hours to over 3,000.

The health ministry reported 3,310 new coronavirus infections, marking a post-lockdown high for the fourth day in a row. The number of clusters being investigated increased by 17 to 252, it said in a website update.

The resurgence prompted Britain to impose a 14-day quarantine for people arriving from France, and led the authorities in Paris to expand zones in the capital where wearing a mask is mandatory outdoors.

Russia to produce COVID-19 vaccine soon

Russia will start the production of its COVID-19 vaccine within two weeks, the country’s health minister Mikhail Murashko said August 12.

“First of all, the production facilities in Russia will be oriented towards the domestic market, to meet the need of our citizens,” Murashko said during a news conference.

Russia will offer the vaccine to other countries when it has sufficient amounts, the minister said, adding that foreign nations’ doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccine are unfounded. The platform where the vaccine was created has been thoroughly studied and its authors have accumulated a sufficient amount of scientific data to guarantee its safety, he added.

Biden picks Harris as running mate

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has announced his long-awaited pick for a running mate, selecting Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

The 55-year-old California senator and former state attorney general and San Francisco district attorney becomes the first Black woman to be named to a national political ticket by a major party. Harris is also the first Asian-American vice presidential nominee in history. It was a move seen acknowledging the vital role Black voters will play in Biden’s bid to defeat Donald Trump in the November 3 election.

US, S. Korea to scale down drills amid virus spike

The United States and South Korea will begin their annual joint military exercises this week, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sunday. But a spreading coronavirus outbreak has apparently forced the allies to scale back an already low-key training program mainly involving computer-simulated war scenarios.

The drills from yesterday to August 28 could still irk North Korea, which portrays the allies’ training as invasion rehearsals and has threatened to abandon stalled nuclear talks if Washington persists with what it perceives as “hostile policies” toward Pyongyang.(SD-Agencies)