India Covid cases: ‘It’s like being hit by a tsunami’

Despite increasing international concern about global warming, one of the world’s greatest defences against climate change – the Amazon rainforest – is under growing attack from deforestation. But while environmentalists see protection of the Amazon as vital, many of those working and making a living in it – including those cutting down its trees – say they depend…

As the Taliban advance there are feelings of grief and fear, a child rights activist in Kabul says.

The Israeli-Gaza conflict can be ended if Hama stops firing rockets, Jerusalem’s deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum has said. She told BBC World News on Thursday that Hamas had been looking for a war for some time: “They have been planning this for months. The Palestinian Authority are trying to distract people from cancelling an election.”…

There is excitement in Ghana at becoming the first country to receive coronavirus vaccines through the Covax vaccine-sharing initiative, the One campaign’s executive director for Africa has said. Edwin Ikhuoria told BBC World News the delivery of the vaccine had been long awaited and was welcome news. The Covax programme was set up by World…

Kabul airport has become the epicentre of the crisis in Afghanistan, with many thousands seeking to flee the country after the Taliban swept to power last week. The BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet witnesses the atmosphere on the tarmac as men, women and children are evacuated from their homeland.

Nine Catalan separatists convicted over a failed independence bid in 2017 have been formally pardoned by the Spanish government. President of the government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, told BBC World News that the priority now was to have an agreed referendum as this was the best way to achieve independence. In Spain tens of thousands…