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BBC News with Neil Nunes.
Rescue teams have worked through the night to locate survivors of the devastating flash floods that hit northern Nepal, killing nearly 200 people. Among those missing are more than 600 tourists. Anbarasan Ethirajan reports. It was a frightening sight. Videos showed huge waves of water, boulders and mud slamming through settlements along the river Bhote Koshi in northern Nepal, leaving little to no chance for those trying to flee their homes. The waters have left a trail of destruction, sweeping away entire villages, bridges and power stations. It's still not clear what triggered the flash floods. Nepal has asked for international help. For now, the challenge will be to rescue the hundreds stranded. Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah promised a maximum response. The social media giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to restrict American teenagers' use of its platforms as part of an $18 billion settlement with states that accused it of harming children. A California judge has approved the deal. Meta says a third of the settlement will only be paid if other social media platforms, including YouTube and TikTok, introduce similar restrictions. Here's Lily Jamali. For Meta, the teen market, as far as revenue, is not massive. It's somewhere like one percent of their revenue comes from these younger users. Companies like YouTube and TikTok are much more powerful players among the teen market. But we should also say Meta, which hasn't admitted any wrongdoing in this case as part of the settlement, does rely on those teen users for future growth and for their future user base. Meanwhile, in Brazil, the government is taking legal action against the messaging platform Discord for failing to adopt child safety measures. The civil lawsuit also requires the U.S.-based company to pay almost $100 million in moral damages. The platform agreed to suspend live streams earlier this month in the wake of a disturbing incident where a 13-year-old girl was reportedly encouraged to take her own life. Regulators in the United States have approved a new drug to fight pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest types of the disease. The new drug may also point the way to treatments for other types of cancer, as we hear in this report from Peter Hyatt. Pancreatic cancer is particularly difficult to fight, in part because the structure of the proteins that drive it make them hard to attack. But the new drug has found a way to do just that. It's taken in pill form and has doubled the life expectancy of patients who receive it, though scientists are careful to point out that it's a treatment, not a cure. Researchers are now studying whether its innovative technique might also work against other cancers. This is the latest world news from the BBC. A man has driven a car into a crowd in Caen in the northwest of France, killing one person and injuring 10 others, four of them seriously. The man reportedly rammed the car into a crowd near the city's train station after a fight in a local bar. One suspect has been arrested. The government of Papua New Guinea is due to begin debating the results of an independence referendum held by its autonomous Bougainville region, potentially paving the way for the creation of a new country. Seven years ago, around 98 percent of people in Bougainville voted to break away from PNG in a non-binding referendum. Dozens of Mexican media outlets have called on the country's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to tackle the rising number of attacks against journalists. The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders says at least 17 journalists have been killed since Ms. Sheinbaum took office almost two years ago. More now from Ella Bicknell. As well as general pressure to provide more press protections, last week President Sheinbaum's administration received condemnation for publishing the names of individuals and media outlets that had criticized the government. Ms. Sheinbaum had denied that she was intimidating journalists. She said there had been incidents of fake news and said the names would not be circulated again. But journalist groups say the killings, attacks and threats continue to create an atmosphere of silence, threatening the right of millions of people to be informed. Scientists have enlisted the help of six narwhals to study how climate change affects the isolated waters surrounding east Greenland. The spiral-tusked whales can dive to 1,500 meters and often return to the same area, making it easy to take repeated measurements. Researchers attached electronic tags to the animals and measured the temperature and salinity of various waters. BBC News. |