A community group in rural Zimbabwe is making reusable sanitary towels so that girls don’t have to miss school when they have their period.
The Chiedza Community Welfare Trust, in Zimbabwe’s Mutasa District, started sewing cloth sanitary pads when founder Gladys Mukaratirwa realized that local girls were missing school every month because they couldn’t afford disposable hygiene products.
“If you calculate two to five days per month it’s about 45 days per year of school time which is wasted, so we realized that there was a need for them to have a sustainable source of sanitary pads,” Mukaratirwa said.
The pads are carefully designed and produced using cloth and flannel fabric to keep them lightweight and easy to wash and dry.
“It’s used, washed and dried in the sun. The sun is strong enough to sanitize this pad. Any harmful microorganisms can be destroyed by the sun and the pad is used again,” Mukaratirwa explained.
As a former teacher, the 60-year-old has dedicated her life to empowering and teaching young women in her village skills that can ensure that they earn an income to feed their families.
The group, run by female volunteers, sells at a low price to locals and to charities across Zimbabwe for distribution to schoolgirls and vulnerable young women.
“This pad is very cheap, and you can use for a year and six months so for just $4 for a pack of five it means for a year you don’t have to worry about buying pads,” a university student and customer, Lee Chisuko said.
Much of Europe is baking in a heatwave that scientists say is consistent with climate change and has pushed temperatures into the mid-40s Celsius (over 110 Fahrenheit) in some regions, with wildfires raging across tinder-dry countryside in Portugal, Spain and France.
France braced for what could become one of the hottest days ever recorded with temperatures reaching and even exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) in coastal regions cherished by tourists, as wildfires intensified in the west and south.
Britain was also braced for temperatures to hit 40C for the first time this week, with ministers urging the public to stay at home as the heatwave caused train services to be cancelled, one London airport to shut its runway and some schools to close.
Temperatures in some parts of southern Europe began to ease over the weekend but thousands of firefighters across the region still battled to contain hundreds of wildfires and authorities said the risk of further blazes remained extremely high.
Spain was facing the eighth and last day of a more than week-long heat wave on Monday, which caused more than 510 heat-related deaths, according to estimates from the Carlos III Health Institute.
Belgium and Germany were among the countries expecting the heatwave to hit them in the coming days.
The EU said it was monitoring closely wildfires raging in southern member states on Monday, sending a firefighting plane to Slovenia over the weekend adding to recent deployments to France and Portugal.
Parisians sought shade, cold drinks and ice cream on Monday as a heatwave struck the French capital.
“We are drinking a lot because it’s super hot and we try to stay in the shade because with the sun, it’s hard,” said Nohe Khaldi, a student from Eastern France.
Some tourists decided to visit a museum in the afternoon, to avoid the hottest hours of the day.
“We’ve come to the museum partly because I wanted to come, and partly because it takes us out of the sun,” said Fiona Lilgert from England.
As a part of a heatwave programme, some city halls open cool rooms to allow elderly and frail people to cool down.
Renee Clair lives on the top floor of a building and she said the temperature in her apartment was too hot for her to remain inside.
“I came because I was starting to faint,” she said.
Shops in the town centre of Redon, in western France, remained almost empty on Monday as customers sought to flee from a freak heatwave that pushed temperatures up to almost 40 degrees Celsius in much of the country.
On Monday, the usually lively promenade in Redon was almost empty, and food store owner Anne-Laury Siong said she barely had a customer enter her shop’s doors.
“We stay open because we have to, but it’s true that we want to close because there’s really no one, not a cat on the street,” Siong said.
Weather forecasters have warned that the current scalding episode, which started last week, could be one of the most intense in France’s history and could last until late July.
“We’re really acutely aware of the fact that these sorts of conditions are going to become more and more of a common event,” said British tourist Aaron Smallshaw.
Dozens of fires have erupted across Spain, scorching acres of land and forcing authorities to evacuate people from their homes.
Firefighters struggled on Monday to control a wildfire in Catalonia which had blackened more than 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of land.
The fire at El Pont de Vilomara, about 56 kilometres from Barcelona, flared up again on Monday afternoon in Bages after it had been stabilised earlier by firefighters, who damped down charred areas to prevent further outbreaks.
Catalan emergency services said more than 350 firefighters were working to contain the blaze with 100 planes and fire tenders joining the fight.
Catalan regional leader Pere Aragones asked the population to be extremely cautious in the coming days and warned the fire alert will remain at high risk.
Elsewhere in Spain, dozens of fires scorched thousands of acres of land, forcing authorities to evacuate people from their homes.
The heatwave, which began on July 10, has pushed temperatures into the 40s (Celsius) (104 Fahrenheit) increasing the risk of wildfires.
A raging wildfire with a huge plume of dense smoke dominated the horizon in Castilla y Leon, in Spain’s Zamora region on Monday.
With fires burning thousands of hectares in Galicia, Castille and Leon, Catalonia, Extremadura and Andalusia, Spain mourned the death of one firefighter in the northwestern province of Zamora on Sunday evening. Almost the entire country faces an extreme fire risk.
More than 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) have burnt in Spain so far this year, the worst year of the last decade, according to official data. Last month, a huge wildfire in Sierra de la Culebra, Castille and Leon, ravaged about 30,000 hectares of land.
Spain also reported a second death caused by a wildfire. A 69-year-old was found dead on Monday in Ferreruela, in a burned-out area, emergency authorities said. Local media reported the victim was a farmer.
Britain’s London Luton airport said on Monday it had reopened to departing flights after a runway defect caused by hot weather, but arrivals remained suspended until further notice.
“The runway re-opened to departing flights at 17.40 (BST). Arrivals remain suspended until further notice,” the airport said on Twitter.
Temperatures rose above 37C in parts of England and were forecast to hit new record highs above 38.7C on either Monday or Tuesday. Much of Europe has also been baking in a heatwave.
The airport, located around 35 miles north of central London, is used by airlines including EasyJet, Wizz Air, Ryanair and TUI.
Some 14 flights due to land at Luton were diverted to other airports including Gatwick and Stansted on Monday afternoon, according to FlightRadar24 data.
There were more than 60 arrivals and departures operated by EasyJet, TUI, Ryanair and Wizz delayed at the airport, according to a Reuters tally of the Luton arrivals and departures board online at 1600 GMT.
That total included 14 Wizz flights heading to European holiday destinations including Tenerife and Dubrovnik, and 16 EasyJet arrivals.
Britain’s Royal Air Force said on Monday aircraft were using alternative airfields to its Brize Norton air base due to extreme temperatures, after Sky News reported that the hot weather had melted the runway at the Oxfordshire base.
The verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed within a time frame.
Acourt in Moscow ruled on Monday to fine Google LLC 21.077 billion rubles (about 369 million U.S. dollars) for repeated failure to delete content prohibited in Russia.
The administrative fine amounts to one tenth of the revenue of Google and its affiliated companies registered with the tax authorities in Russia.
The verdict has not entered into force and can be appealed within a time frame.
Google-owned YouTube “purposefully contributes to the distribution of unreliable information about the progress of the (Russian) special military operation in Ukraine; materials promoting extremist views and the ideology of terrorist organizations” among other things, Russia’s telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor said in a statement last month.
In December, a Moscow court fined Google for the first time 7.2 billion rubles (some 126 million U.S. dollars) for its failure to remove banned information.
In addition, the U.S. tech giant was fined 15 million rubles (about 260,000 U.S. dollars) last month for repeated refusal to localize the personal data of Russian users.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Sunday criticized President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, saying it rewarded a dictatorship and should have never taken place given its leader’s involvement in murdering a journalist.
Biden greeted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who U.S. intelligence agencies believe ordered the killing in 2018 of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, with a fist bump shortly after his arrival on the visit.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos when asked by host Martha Raddatz if Biden should have made the visit.
“You have a leader of the country who was involved in the murder of a Washington Post journalist. I don’t think that type of government should be rewarded with a visit by the president of the United States,” Sanders said.
The killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi insider turned critic who had been living in self-imposed exile in Virginia, is a major point of contention between the two countries. Bin Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler, denies ordering it.
Biden on Friday (July 15) said he told the prince that he held him responsible for Khashoggi’s murder. A Saudi official present at the meeting said the exchange was not as Biden described.
The trip was intended to reset relations with Saudi Arabia, which Biden had said he’d isolate internationally. His struggle to reduce record-high gasoline prices this year has complicated the situation as the United States urges oil-producing nations to boost production to offset Russian losses following Western sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
As a presidential candidate, Biden had said that the kingdom should be made a “pariah” on the world stage because of Khashoggi’s murder. Sanders ran against Biden in the Democratic Party presidential primary.
Sanders said the United States should impose a windfall profit tax on oil companies instead of cosying up with Saudi Arabia.
“Look, you got a family that is worth $100 billion, which questions democracy, which treats women as third-class citizens, which murderers and imprisons its opponents,” he said of the Saudi royal family.
“If this country believes in anything, we believe in human rights, we believe in democracy, and I just don’t believe that we should be maintaining a warm relationship with a dictatorship like that,” Sanders said.
The five Conservative contenders still vying to be Britain’s next prime minister clashed during a televised debate on Sunday, each trying to prove why they should take over leadership of the country.
With no clear candidate to succeed Boris Johnson, who is stepping down after a series of scandals, the battle to be the next leader remains unpredictable and increasingly fractious, exposing rifts in the ruling Conservative Party.
Former Equalities Minister and leadership contender, Kemi Badenoch, stressed that “serving in government is not easy,” while accusing rival Tom Tugendhat of a lack of experience in this area.
“It’s very easy for him (Tugendhat) to criticise what we’ve been doing. But we have been out there on the frontline,” Badenoch said.
Tugendhat responded by saying that he had served on the frontline in Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as arguing that we were on the frontline “of the argument against Putin, and against China.”
Ex-finance minister Rishi Sunak has emerged as the favourite among the 358 Conservative lawmakers, who will hold further votes this week to whittle down the field of contenders to a final two.
Sunak, who is married to Akshata Murty, addressed criticism over his wife’s family wealth, saying that he was “incredibly” proud of what her family have built.
“My father-in-law, came from absolutely nothing, and just had a dream and a couple of hundred pounds that my mother-in-law’s savings provided him,” he said.
“It’s an incredibly conservative story.”
Whoever gets the job will take on rocketing inflation and low economic growth, as well as the public’s lack of confidence in politics after Johnson’s scandal-ridden time in power.
Opinion polls also suggest the Conservatives are falling significantly behind the opposition Labour Party.
One candidate will be knocked out every day in the next three days, leaving a final two to face the verdict of Conservative Party members. They will vote for the winner who will be announced on Sept. 5.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday abruptly fired the head of Ukraine’s powerful domestic security agency, the SBU, and the state prosecutor general, citing dozens of cases of collaboration with Russia by officials in their agencies.
The sackings of SBU chief Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend of Zelenskiy, and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who has played a key role in the prosecution of Russian war crimes, were announced in executive orders on the president’s website.
The firings are easily the biggest political sackings since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, forcing the entire Ukrainian state machine to focus on the war effort.
Zelenskiy said he had fired the top officials because it had come to light that many members of their agencies had collaborated with Russia, a problem he said had touched other agencies as well.
He said 651 cases of alleged treason and collaboration had been opened against prosecutorial and law enforcement officials, and that more than 60 officials from Bakanov and Venediktova’s agencies were now working against Ukraine in Russian-occupied territories.
The sheer number of treason cases lays bare the huge challenge of Russian infiltration faced by Ukraine as it battles Moscow in what it says is a fight for survival.
“Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the national security of the state … pose very serious questions to the relevant leaders,” Zelenskiy said.
“Each of these questions will receive a proper answer,” he said.
Russian troops have captured swathes of Ukraine’s south and east during an invasion that has killed thousands, displaced millions and destroyed cities.
It remains unclear how the southern, Russian-occupied region of Kherson fell so quickly, in contrast to the fierce resistance around Kyiv that forced Russia eventually to withdraw to focus on capturing the industrial Donbas heartland in the east.
In his nightly speech to the nation, Zelenskiy noted the recent arrest on suspicion of treason of the SBU’s former head overseeing the region of Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 that Kyiv and the West still view as Ukrainian land.
Zelenskiy said he had fired the top security official at the start of the invasion, a decision he said had now been shown to be justified.
Bakanov was appointed to head the SBU in 2019, one of an array of new faces who rose to prominence after Zelenskiy, a former comedian, won election earlier that year.
Zelenskiy appointed Oleksiy Symonenko as the new prosecutor general in a separate executive order that was also published on the president’s site.
A Ukrainian cargo plane carrying munitions from Serbia to Bangladesh crashed near the city of Kavala in northern Greece late on Saturday, Serbian authorities said on Sunday.
Drone images from the scene showed debris from the bulking Antonov An-12 aircraft strewn in fields. Greek authorities said there were eight crew members on board.
Serbia’s defence minister said the plane, operated by a Ukrainian company, was carrying 11.5 tonnes of products made by its defence industry and the buyer was Bangladesh defence ministry. He said the crew members were killed.
Greek authorities could not provide information on the aircraft’s cargo but the special disaster response unit and army experts were been dispatched to investigate the scene.
Serbia’s defence minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said the cargo included illuminating mortar shells and training shells. It had taken off at 1840 GMT from Nis and had permission to fly to Amman, Riyadh, Ahmedabad in India before arriving in Dhaka.
“The plane carried 11.5 tonnes of products made by our defence industry. The buyer was the Bangladesh defence ministry,“ Stefanovic said.
He added that the plane’s cargo was owned by Serbian company Valir, a trading company registered to perform foreign trade activities of armament military equipment and other defence products.
A senior source at Jordan’s civil aviation regulatory commission (CARC) denied initial reports that the plane was headed to Jordan. The source said that its flight itinerary included a stopover in Jordan’s Queen Alia international airport at 9:30 pm (0630 GMT), to refuel, state news agency Petra reported on Sunday.
The wider area in Greece where the aircraft crashed has been cordoned off since Saturday night. Residents nearby have been advised to keep windows and doors shut and avoid the area of the incident.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said on Saturday he was not aware of any discussions on a Gulf-Israeli defence alliance and that the kingdom was not involved in such talks.
Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told reporters after a U.S.-Arab summit that Riyadh’s decision to open its airspace to all air carriers had nothing to do with establishing diplomatic ties with Israel and was not a precursor to further steps.
Speaking at a news conference, Al Saudi also said that they did not discuss oil and that Opec+ would continue to assess market conditions and do what is necessary.
“There were no talks of military or technical cooperation with Israel…neither during the summit nor before.” Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told a news conference.
U.S. officials said President Joe Biden would discuss energy security with leaders of Gulf oil producers during his visit and hoped to see more action by Opec+ to boost output, but there was unlikely to be any bilateral announcements from the talks.
The United States is eager to see Saudi Arabia and its Opec partners pump more oil to help tame crude prices. Opec+, which also includes Russia, meets next on Aug. 3.
Iran said on Saturday it had imposed sanctions on 61 more Americans, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, for backing an Iranian dissident group, as months of talks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal are at an impasse.
Others blacklisted by Iran’s Foreign Ministry for voicing support for the exiled dissident group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) included former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani and former White House national security adviser John Bolton, Iranian state media reported.
The sanctions, issued against dozens of Americans in the past on various grounds, let Iranian authorities seize any assets they hold in Iran, but the apparent absence of such assets means the steps will likely be symbolic.
Giuliani, Pompeo and Bolton have been widely reported to have taken part in MEK events and voiced support for the group.
In January Iran imposed sanctions on 51 Americans, and it blacklisted 24 more Americans in April in its latest sanctions moves.
Iran’s indirect talks with the United States on reviving the 2015 nuclear pact began in November in Vienna and continued in Qatar in June. But the negotiations have faced a months-long impasse.
In 2018, then-U.S. President Trump abandoned the deal, calling it too soft on Iran, and reimposed harsh U.S. sanctions, spurring Tehran to breach nuclear limits in the pact.
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