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Ten killed, dozens injured in Turkey train derailment

Agencies
July 9, 2018

Istanbul, Jul 9: Ten people were killed and 73 injured on Sunday when a train packed with weekend passengers derailed in northwest Turkey, the health ministry said.

The train, with over 360 people on board, was travelling from the Edirne region on the Greek and Bulgarian borders to Istanbul's Halkali station when six of its carriages derailed in the Tekirdag region.

Over 100 ambulances have been sent to the scene, state-run TRT Haber television said TRT Haber said, quoting Health Ministry Undersecretary Eyup Gumus.

The Turkish army said in a statement that it had sent helicopters to the scene.

Television pictures showed several train carriages laying on their sides, and shocked injured being taken away on stretchers as rescue workers picked through the wreckage.

"There are a large number of injured and we have fatalities," Tekirdag governor Mehmet Ceylan told the NTV channel. "The accident happened because of adverse weather conditions," he added.

Reports said the surrounding area was muddy due to recent rains and the ground beneath the rails may have subsided away, causing the train to derail.

The train derailed outside the village of Sarilar in the Corlu district of Tekirdag, reports said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been informed over the accident and expressed his condolences over those who lost their lives, state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Turkish authorities under Erdogan have over the last years sought to modernise Turkey's once ramshackle rail network, building several high-speed inter-city lines.

Turkish passengers have in general preferred taking planes or the bus for inter-city travel but this is changing with the new high-speed lines.

The train involved in the accident appeared to be one of the slower passenger trains travelling on a single track railway.

Turkey's rail network has been hit by several fatal accidents over the last years.

In January 2008, nine people were killed when a train derailed in the Kutahya region south of Istanbul due to faulty rails.

And in Turkey's worst recent rail disaster, 41 people were killed and 80 injured in July 2004 when a high-speed train derailed in the northwestern province of Sakarya.

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News Network
April 22,2020

London, Apr 22: The UK government on Tuesday announced a 20 million pounds funding for a University of Oxford project working on developing a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, which is now ready for acceleration as it begins human trials from Thursday.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the daily Downing Street briefing that the Department for Health was “throwing everything” at trying to find a vaccine because it is a critical aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic fight and lifting the strict lockdown measures in place to curb its spread.

Another 22.5 million pounds is being made available to Imperial College London to support its phase-two clinical trials for them to begin the work on a very large phase three trial.

"Normally it would take years to get to this point," said Hancock.

"The UK is at the forefront of the global effort – we've put in more money than any other into the global search for a vaccine. Nothing about this is inevitable. Vaccine production is a matter of trial and error. But the UK will throw everything it has at trying to find one,” he said.

The announcement came as Britain had another major daily leap in the hospital death toll from coronavirus, up by 823 to hit 17,337 on Tuesday.

But the Cabinet minister said the government's plan to control the rapid spread of the virus and prevent the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) from being overwhelmed is working as the number of hospitalisations with COVID-19 was showing a downward trajectory.

In reference to a major issue in the last few weeks of a critical shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors and nurses on the frontlines of COVID-19 treatment, the minister said the supply problems are being addressed by actively engaging with thousands of companies, including 159 UK manufacturers.

“We are determined to get people the PPE they need. This is a 24/7 operation, one of the biggest cross-government operation I have ever seen," said Hancock.

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News Network
June 6,2020

Islamabad, Jun 6: Pakistan has reported a record 97 COVID-19 deaths in a single day, taking the total number of fatalities to 1,935, while the number of confirmed cases in the country approached 94,000 after over 4,700 infections were detected, the health ministry said on Saturday.

Punjab registered 35,308 COVID-19 cases, Sindh 34,889, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 12,459, Balochistan 5,776 Islamabad 4,323, Gilgit-Baltistan 897 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 331 cases, the Ministry of National Health Services said.

The total number of COVID-19 cases reached 93,983 after 4,734 new infections were detected across the country, it said.

With a record 97 fatalities in one day, the death toll in the country has reached 1,935, while 32,581 people have recovered from the disease.

The ministry said that the total number of active COVID-19 cases in Pakistan are 59,467, out of which 1,265 patients are in critical condition.

More than 100 labs in the country have so far conducted 660,508 tests, including 22,185 in the last 24 hours.

There are 747 hospitals across the country with COVID-19 treatment facilities where 5,060 patients are being treated. Others have been asked to self-isolate at home.

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Agencies
July 28,2020

Sydney, Jul 28: Nearly 3 billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Tuesday, triple the group's earlier estimates.

Some 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs were impacted by the country's worst bushfires in decades, the WWF said.

When the fires were still blazing, the WWF estimated the number of affected animals at 1.25 billion. The fires destroyed more than 11 million hectares (37 million acres) across the Australian southeast, equal to about half the area of the United Kingdom.

"This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history," said WWF-Australia Chief Executive Officer Dermot O'Gorman in a statement.

The project leader Lily Van Eeden, from the University of Sydney, said the research was the first continent-wide analysis of animals impacted by the bushfires, and "other nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere".

The total number included animals which were displaced because of destroyed habitats and now faced lack of food and shelter or the prospect of moving to habitat that was already occupied.

The main reason for raising the number of animal casualties was that researchers had now assessed the total affected area, rather than focusing on the most affected states, they said.

After years of drought made the Australian bush unusually dry, the country battled one of its worst bushfire seasons ever from September 2019 to March 2020, resulting in 34 human deaths and nearly 3,000 homes lost.

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