A bus carrying Afghans was recently deported from Iran crashed on Tuesday, causing fire to kill dozens of men, women and children.

Governor spokesman Mufti Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi told CNN that at least 76 people were killed after a crash on a highway in Herat city.

The bus departing from Islamic Kara, a town near the Afghanistan-Iranian border, was heading towards the capital Kabul when it crashed, Saiedi said.

Video from the site shows a bus engulfed in flames with thick plumes of smoke swirling through the sky. The photo shows a burnt vehicle as people gather around it.

The burnt bodies of passengers have been transferred to a local hospital, according to Ahmadura Muttaki, director of the Information and Culture Department of Herat Province.

At least 17 children were killed in the crash crash, Muttaqi said.

Catastrophic clashes arise as Iran has stepped up the deportation of undocumented Afghan migrants. Tehran had previously declared its intention to remove millions of undocumented Afghans who engage in low-wage work in Iran, often in harsh conditions.

Some of the programmes announced by Iran in March have increased radically several days after the conflict between Iran and Israel, supported by unfounded claims that Afghans spy on Israel before and during the attack.

According to the United Nations, more than half a million Afghans were expelled from Iran 16 days after the conflict with Israel ended in June.

Many Afghans have lived in Iran for years, where they are often in half-major situations despite lack of documentation.

The sharp rise in deportation and the allegations of Afghan spies have attracted international condemnation.

Korean Paju
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Captivated during the Korean War and for decades of jail for refusing to abandon his political beliefs, 95-year-old Ahn Hak-Sop has one death wish to return to North Korea and be buried with his comrades.

Anne spent most of his life resisting what he calls “occupying” of America in Korea. First as a soldier in the North Korean army and later as a rebel in the country that captured him.

Refusing to abandon his unwavering support for North Korea, he denounced Anne behind a bar in the south for over 40 years.

Now frail, sick and trapped in a wheelchair, he tells him he is eager to move to North Korea one last time, and is eager to rest in the country that defined his life.

On Wednesday, Anne slowly shuffles the bridge leading to the unarmed zone (DMZ) of the South Korean Peninsula and enters North Korea, sueing permission to cross the zone, one of the heaviest militarized boundaries in the world.

Hours later, in a scrum of security and protesters, Anne was denied overland access to North Korea and sent back, as if South Korean officials were allowed to cross over to him.

Rejection was crushed.

“I miss the North, I can’t stand it,” he said, holding the North Korean flag.

“I want to be buried in a free land.”

The South Korean government has banned individuals from unauthorized contact with North Korea, and restrictions on civilians from entering the heavily strengthened DMZ. The Korean War of 1950-53 ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. In other words, North Korea and South Korea are still technically at war.

If Anne had been allowed to return, Pyongyang could present his repatriation as an iconic victory.

But for Anne, the problem is much more personal and existential. He is weakened by the illness he has been hospitalized multiple times this year, and his only wish is to be buried in North Korean soil. Or, as he calls it, “My ideological homeland, the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK).”

Anne is one of six long-term non-virified prisoners remaining in South Korea who recently asked to return north.

The Seoul government is considering “various options from a humanitarian perspective,” and officials from the Unification Ministry said cooperation from Pyongyang is needed.

Anne was born in 1930 on Ganga Island off the west coast of Korea during Japan’s brutal colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula. He grew up in turbulence and uncertainty. One brother was forced into the Japanese army, and another was abandoned. When police searched, Anne escaped and found a shelter with her aunt.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, Anne was 15 years old. Instead of celebrating, he said he felt betrayed by a declaration from General Douglas MacArthur, who placed South Korea south of the 38th Parallel under American control.

The declaration gave American officials extensive authority over political, economic and security issues in the South until the formation of a new government.

“So, seeing the declaration, I realized that we weren’t freed,” he said. “That’s how it all started. That’s why I started the anti-AU movement.”

When the Korean War began in 1950, Anne was a middle school student at Cathon, and was then the bustling city near the 38th parallel. He saw the troops surge back and forth across the newly imposed division line between the north and south. In 1952 he officially enlisted in the North Korean People’s Army and served in the Intelligence News Division.

When the war was drawn to a bloody deadlock in 1953, Anne was captured. Of the ten soldiers in his unit, he said he was the only one to survive.

If Anne signed a paper under existing Korean law at the time that waived North and its communist ideology, he would have been eligible for parole. However, he refused and remained behind the South bar for the next 42 years and six months.

Anne’s imprisonment is one of the longest endured by North Korean prisoners of war held in the South. He explained that his time was merciless. It is not merely due to physical difficulties, but the psychological pressure to abandon his beliefs.

“In the beginning, they tried to convert me through conversation,” he recalled. “When that didn’t work, they started to torture me.”

Anne claims she endured brutal punishments, including assault and exposure to frozen water.

At one point he was brought back to Ganga Island and reunited with his sisters. He refused.

“It was really painful,” he recalled.

When he was finally forgiven in 1995 on the holiday of South Korea’s Liberation Day, Anne described the moment in bitter words. He simply said, “I moved from a small, trapped prison to a large, open prison.”

Still, he said he was under close surveillance and police continued.

In 2000, amid a brief melting of political tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang, South Korea allowed 63 non-verted long-term prisoners to return north.

Anne was offered the opportunity to cross the border, but made the painful decision to stay.

People returning to North Korea were soaking in parades and banners. However, Anne said that his “mission” was unfinished and he remained in Korean soil. Despite decades in the South, he has never wavered by his belief that South Korea remains an American-influenced colony.

“I came here and came to the US ‘colonies’. …I’m fighting the United States, but I couldn’t do anything and only served time in prison,” he said.

“How do you feel embarrassed about going back? If you scream, ‘We have to do that from here, not north,’ I wouldn’t come back… After witnessing the Americans leaving this land, I decided to die. ”

“I either kick the Americans out of here or I’ll die,” he said.

Today, Anne lives in a modest home in Yongganri, just a mile away from the North Korean border where he shuns his large family and dreams of crossing.

To get it, he relies on the government’s benefits given to low-income people and the support from his acquaintances.

The walls of his home are covered with faded photographs, North Korean posters, and memorabilia of the ideological memorabilia that defined his existence. His doormat is a US flag.

“It would be too much responsive to be buried in a colony after death,” he said.

The Unified Bridge over the Imjin River in Paju, Korea, was a ceremonial intersection of summit meetings, family reunions and unusual delegations traveling between Korea.

On Wednesday, it became the site of Anne’s latest conflict with the South Korean government.

Authorities blocked his passage, citing the national security law and the lack of agreement with Pyongyang to promote his return.

North Korea stopped all communications with South Korea in 2023, making it difficult for Seoul to discuss the repatriation of Ahn and other prisoners.

Korean human rights groups expressed sympathy for Anne’s light letter, but few people expected the government to allow crossings.

After being denied permission at the border on Wednesday, Anne stepped into an ambulance waiting and was taken away.

For Anne, the rejection emphasized that he had believed in nearly 80 years. His fate is not reconciliation, but is bound by a permanent division.

“I am determined to return to my home of ideology, the home of my principles,” he said. “DPRK, the beginning of my life.”

A sudden, extreme rainfall explosion causes devastation across the mountains of South Asia, causing flash floods, deadly mudflows, and huge landslides that have washed away the entire neighborhood and transformed a vibrant community into mountains of mud and tiled rubs.

In northwestern Pakistan, fierce floods crashed villages, killing at least 321 people within 48 hours, local authorities reported on Saturday.

More than 10 villages in the Banner area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province are devastated by flash floods, with dozens of people still being trapped under thick mud and debris.

According to Reuters, India-controlled Kashmir killed at least 60 people in Kashmir-led Kashmir, and more than 200 people went missing as mud and water walls passed through Chashoti town on Friday. Earlier this month, at least four people died after another surge that tore a village in India’s mountainous Uttarakhand into floods.

Photo: Pakistan’s deadly monsoon flood

Local governments in both countries say many of the fatal floods and landslides were caused by a rapid, heavy rain attack known as cloudbursts.

Scientists say these extreme rain episodes are set to become more frequent and ferocious in this ecologically vulnerable region, whether cloudburst or long-term heavy rains, as the climate crisis intensifies.

Here’s what you need to know.

Cloudbursts are sudden, highly localized downpours that can be destroyed by the vast amount of water that unleashes in a short period of time, often causing dangerous flash floods and landslides.

They occur especially during the monsoon season, and during the monsoon season, where there is plenty of moisture in the air. The area, which has been flooded by destructive rain and flooding in recent weeks, is located in the hilly regions of South Asia’s huge mountain ranges, home to the world’s highest peaks and glaciers.

Monsoon air can hit these mountains and cool quickly, rapidly cool, condense into thick clouds, and release torrents.

The Indian Weather Service defines cloudbursts as having a rainfall rate of more than 100 mm (4 inches) per hour.

“The Himalayas, Karakolam and Hindu Kush are particularly vulnerable due to steep slopes, fragile geology and narrow valleys that leaked storm runoffs into destructive rapids.”

Residents of Pakistan’s Hard Hit Sarazai described the mud and huge rock rapids that rock the earthquake like an earthquake.

These extreme local rain bursts are difficult to predict.

“This makes these events difficult to understand, monitor and predict whether they’re studying cloudbursts or explosive glacial floods,” Koll said.

“The storm is also too small and fast for accurate predictions.”

The high levels of poverty in the area, lack of infrastructure and access to basic facilities are barriers to convey most of the information available to the communities that live there.

“The big gap is not the technology gap, but the communication gap,” said Ali Taukhia Sheikh, a climate expert based in Islamabad.

He added that “weak governance and lack of early warning systems” in these regions exacerbated the problem.

With ramp-stretching deforestation and unplanned development, it is a fatal combination.

“Due to very heavy deforestation, heavy rain and cloudbursts lead to landslides and landslides. They bring in rocks and timber,” Sheikh said.

“There is a very high percentage of people living along the waters and the preparation time is very limited,” so there are often heavy casualties,” he said.

Cloudbursts in the region have been occurring at higher intensity and frequency in recent years, spurring record global temperatures.

Warm air absorbs water like a sponge, and all this excess water can lead to extreme rain and sudden downpours like cloudburst, especially when that air meets the mountains.

“Warm waters load up excess moisture in the monsoon, and the warm atmosphere retains more water and fuels heavy rain when moist air is forced on steep mountain slopes,” said Koll, of India’s Tropical Meteorological Institute.

During the southwest monsoon season, annual rains have been poured from the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, across regions of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, resulting in rapid global warming in recent years.

A long-term heat wave burned through the area prior to this year’s flood.

“Each level above the average temperature means that the moisture in the air is 7% higher,” Shake said.

“If there is a stronger heat wave in the South Asian subcontinent, India or Pakistan, we can assume that the rain will be heavier.”

And melting glaciers are only added to the disaster.

Large areas of the Himalayas and Karakolam regions are thousands of glaciers that melt and lose mass at increasingly faster rates as the world warms.

“Glacier melts do not directly cause cloudbursts, but create unstable lakes and vulnerable terrain that can exacerbate the impact through floods and landslides,” Koll said.

Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of the gas that warms the world’s planets, but according to the global climate risk index, it is the most vulnerable country to the climate crisis.

Climate change is already changing the landscape of the region.

“The monsoon itself has shifted under climate change, with a lengthy dry spell interrupted by a short, extreme rain explosion, a pattern that has already tripled the events of India’s heavy rain in recent decades,” Koll said.

Pakistan suffered in 2022 during its most devastating monsoon season. This has resulted in widespread floods that killed almost 2,000 people, kicked out thousands, and caused an estimated $40 billion in damage.

Since then, fatal floods have been occurring every year. Recent research has shown that the rainfall that hit Pakistan between June and July this year is heavy due to the climate crisis.

In Pakistan, the timing, location and amount of monsoon rains have changed, and “although Pakistan appears to have reduced average rainfall, the frequency of heavy rain has increased,” Sheikh said.

Droughts and floods can affect the country in the same month during the monsoon, making water availability more uncertain in countries already suffering from a serious water crisis. “It affects our food security and crop patterns,” Sheikh said.

The devastation and financial sacrifice created by floods in Pakistan, India and Nepal this year is what the global warming crisis, which has been around for about 1.2 degrees, looks like since industrialization.

However, by the end of the century, the world has been orbiting around three degrees of warming as humans continue to burn the fossil fuels that acquire planets. Scientists warn that any proportion of warming will exacerbate the impact of the crisis.

The Himalayas, Karakolam and Hindu Kush regions span eight countries, and extreme weather events have knock-on effects in other countries.

The coming together of governments from these South Asian countries is “highly critical,” Sheikh said.

“We’re facing the same set of problems and we have a similar solution,” he said.

“But the ability to learn from each other, to learn each other’s scientific knowledge, to the community is absolutely disabled. That’s very damaging to us.”

But already, relations between Pakistan and India have deteriorated to a low level in May, which escalated Kashmir’s long-term conflict in May, prompting India to suspend a key treaty that controls the shared Indus River that flows through both countries.

“That’s why the Indus Water Treaty requires another lease of life to tackle the threats and challenges of the emerging climate in the water sector,” he said.

Building resilience is important for millions of people living downstream of India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

It means “evading settlements, construction and mining in hazard zones, enforcing climate-resistant infrastructure, and strengthening early warning systems.”

The White House agreement on Monday on the next step — a bilateral meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Voldimir Zelensky — appeared unanimous. Then came the Russian reaction.

“This idea was debated that it would be appropriate to study opportunities to raise the level of representatives in Russia and Ukraine,” Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov explains reporters about President Donald Trump’s call from President Putin. Neither mention of a leader by name shows any indication that “representative” can be raised to that level.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov won a more reconciliatory tone in a television interview with the state later Tuesday. “We don’t reject any form, not bilateral or trilateral,” he insisted. But: “Contacts, including the best officials, should be prepared with the utmost care.”

When the Kremlin speaks, it means they are not ready to agree to this.

And that shouldn’t be a surprise.

This is a war that President Putin began when he unilaterally acknowledged the clumps of Ukraine’s lands (self-style Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic) to be independent. He argues that Ukraine is “an inviolable part of (Russia’s) unique history, culture and spiritual space” and that separation from Russia is a historical mistake.

So, if this meeting occurs – as Orysia Lutsevich, director of Russia and Eurasian Program M at Chatham House, puts it, President Putin “must accept the failure to sit with a president who is thinking of a joke from a non-existent country.”

It was also a major reversal that was difficult to explain to the Russian people. “Zelensky was a puppet in the Nazi, the western (Ukraine) because he was brainwashing Russians on television in the province.

Not only does the Kremlin routinely question the legitimacy of Ukrainian leaders, it has stuck to postponing Ukrainian elections, not only is it illegal under martial law, but its latest memorandum of “peace” requires Ukraine to hold elections before the final peace treaty is signed. Putin and other Russian officials rarely mention Zelensky by name, preferring the scathing moniker of the “Kiev regime.” And remember that it was Zelensky who traveled to Turkey, just to send a delegation led by a writer of historical textbooks, and Putin was the one who traveled to Turkey, just to send a delegation led by a writer of historical textbooks.

Tatiana Stanobaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russian Eurasian Centre and founder of R. Politic, which provides news and analysis on Russia, believes Putin’s meeting with Zelensky is not important for Russia to stand up to the west rather than the West, but he insists that if he considers it to be successful, he can still take the meeting.

“The important requests need to be on the table and Zelensky must be fine to talk about it,” she told CNN in an interview Tuesday. For now, Zelensky has ruled out these important requests, including the renunciation of Ukraine’s territory. But she argued that Putin sees Trump as the key to changing it.

“Trump is seen as an enabler of Russia’s vision of reconciliation, and this is why the US is supposed to work with Kiev to encourage them to be more flexible and more open to Russia’s demands.”

Stanovaya suggested that Russia might try to maintain the US by doing what Ushakov had proposed and proposing a new round for Istanbul, but perhaps proposed with a high-level delegation, including Ushakov himself and Foreign Minister Lavrov. However, he does not risk an “ambush” just by sitting with Zelensky and finding that all his requests have been denied.

Trump ended his day on Monday by posting the true social society that he “started a meeting arrangement between President Putin and Zelensky.” By the time he woke up and dialed the Fox News breakfast show on Tuesday morning, this seemed to be crazy about him. “It’s like setting up with Putin and Zelensky. They need to call shots. We’re 7,000 miles away,” he said.

Putin has no reason to acquiesce at this point. Having put zero concessions in place, he was rewarded with the grand summit in Alaska, the reduced demands by Trump to sign a ceasefire before peace talks, and the ultimate collapse of all the sanctions to date. With the scale of nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian cities so far in August, Russia increased them again on Monday night, launching 270 drones and 10 missiles. If Trump’s pressure on Zelensky has not yet produced the outcome Moscow wants, there is always a military force to rely on.

Russia’s only wildcard at this point is who Trump is responsible for when this latest peace effort fails.

Tel Aviv, Israel
–

Elijah Cohen is a survivor who still can’t live himself again. He hid under his body as Hamas extremists threw a hand-rena bullet into the bomb shelter before taking the prisoners there. He lived in captivity for 505 days in Gaza, chaining and sharing scraps of pita and canned beans with other hostages. And he was released to his joyous family – and to find his girlfriend alive and waiting for him.

However, six months after he left Gaza, he says he cannot begin his recovery. No other hostages are yet to be held there.

“I feel guilty when I eat. I feel guilty when I shower. I feel guilty when I go to the hospital,” he told CNN in an exclusive interview with international correspondent Clarissorward. “I feel guilty because I know what they’re going through now.”

He recognizes he must work to heal his physical and mental wounds, but the thoughts of the last 20 living hostages in Gaza squeeze him every day, he says, he is the brothers of a family who cannot forget himself.

Cohen broke through Gaza’s border fences under rocket ails from Hamas and other groups who took part in the attack with girlfriend Ziv Abud and at the Nova Music Festival on the morning of October 7, 2023.

Cohen and Abdo, like many other festival participants, ran for the cover.

The pair, along with about 30 others, were hiding in a concrete bomb shelter, when they were discovered by the attacker who threw a hand-rena bullet. People in front of the bunker were killed by an explosion.

As more rena bullets were thrown out, Cohen and Abdo hid underneath the bodies. It was the only protection they could find.

“I talked a lot with ZIV… trying to see if she was alive and she told me, ‘At least (heaven), we’ll be fine,'” he said.

The militants attacked the shelter, fired gunshots, killed his girlfriend’s nephew and partner, and injured Cohen in his leg. He was found behind a pickup truck with Hirsch Goldberg Pollin and Levy, leaving Abd behind.

He thought he would never see her again.

“I was sure she had passed away. There’s no chance she’d survived it,” Cohen recalls.

When they arrived in Gaza, Cohen told him that Hamas militants wanted to use hostages to reach an agreement with Israel to release Palestinians from Israeli prisons.

He didn’t expect to be there for more than 500 days.

For most of his prisoners, Cohen said he was detained along with a small, dark, “abandoned” tunnel, or with Levi, Eli Sharabi and Aron O’Haru. Levy and Sharabi have been released. Ohel remains in captivity in Gaza.

He said their feet are tied up by motorcycle chains and it’s difficult to get to the toilet. He only showered once every two months and did not brush his teeth for a year. The four hostages shared pita bread and cans of beans every day “for a long time,” he recalled.

“For eight months, we slept on the floor… I dislocated my shoulder for many nights… We felt weak,” he added.

What kept Cohen strong was his cherishment of the bonds he had built with other hostages, particularly his relationship with Hirsch Goldberg Porin.

Goldberg Polin was hiding in the same shelter as Cohen when his hand bullet was blown away from his left arm. They were separated in Gaza and Cohen thought Goldberg Polin would probably not survive the injury.

Two months later, they met again in the tunnel, where they were temporarily detained together. Cohen instantly recognized him from his bandaged arm, and they were linked to their shared experiences at the bombshell shelter.

Goldberg Polin even helped Cohen learn English after giving him a book to read.

“We were together for three days and we felt like we’ve been friends for 10 years,” Cohen said.

Last summer, we were hoping that Goldberg Polin would be released in the first phase of the final ceasefire agreement, even if it was still a few months away. While they are together, Goldberg Polin promises Cohen to tell his parents that his son is alive. It was a promise he could never maintain.

Shortly afterwards, Goldberg Polin and five other hostages were killed by Hamas after Israeli forces approached the tunnel they were holding.

It was a shock when Cohen found it in captivity.

“I cried a lot. I didn’t really believe it,” Cohen said.

A difficult goodbye and an unexpected reunion

Cohen became emotionally explaining his time in captivity, especially when he mentions Oell, the last hostage he was held in custody.

After Sharabi and Levy were released in February in the first phase of the ceasefire agreement signed in January, Cohen’s prisoners told him he was on the next list.

That meant leaving Ohel behind.

“It was a difficult situation…we hugged each other and we started crying,” he said.

When Cohen returned home, he was shocked to discover that his girlfriend Abdo had survived the bombshell shelter and had been campaigning for his release ever since.

“I can’t put into words how it felt,” he said. “It was a dream. It felt like a dream, and for a week, watching her, I felt like a dream,” he said.

A month later, Israel launched a wave of deadly airstrikes throughout the Gaza Strip, shattering the ceasefire and Cohen’s hope to see Ohel soon. Cohen has since found little reason for hope.

Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to further expand the military’s attacks and occupy Gaza city.

The plan warned that within Israel, the remaining 50 hostage families (some of whom are also dead are alive), could spark harsh criticism in Gaza, warning that movements will be lost forever.

After 22 months of pounding in Gaza, Israel faces global condemnation of its actions and Palestinian starvation.

When Cohen was moved from one tunnel to another, he got a glimpse of Gaza, and could be described as “apocalypse.”

He said the only way Ohel and the rest of the hostages would return is through a transaction, and he urged Netanyahu to return to the negotiation table.

“I believe they can bring all the hostages into the house, just like I went home.”

According to the Tlaxcala Prosecutor’s Office, Mexican authorities are investigating the discoveries of six mutilated human heads between the central state of Puebla and the central state of Tlaxcala.

In X, the head belongs to the man and said without providing details about the incident.

CNN is requesting more information and is waiting for a response.

Fearful killings by criminal groups are not uncommon in Mexico.

Earlier this year, Sinaloa officials discovered 20 men who were injured by bullets on a bridge on a federal highway.

Puebla and Tlaxcala are central states located just 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Mexico City.

Official figures show that neither of these are among the states that have the highest level of violence in Mexico.

Puebla accounts for 3.4% of the 14,769 intentional murders recorded nationwide from January to July, with Tlaxcala, 0.5%.

Both Puebla and Tlaxcala are generally considered safer destinations compared to other Mexico states, with the US Department of State designating both Level 2 travel advisories.

However, authorities acknowledge that their geographic locations face issues such as the movement of criminal groups dedicated to drug trafficking, human trafficking and fuel theft.

In 2022, Puebla authorities discovered a truck carrying 116 immigrants of various nationalities.