NEWS

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A tropical storm has unleashed a month's worth of rainfall across extensive areas of the northern Philippines, resulting in over 20 fatalities and prompting the evacuation of 150,000 people. Trami made landfall Thursday on the northeast coast of Luzon, the country's most populous island, and caused widespread flooding and landslides. The Bicol peninsula was worst-hit, where floodwaters chased people and their pets to the second storey of their homes. Typhoons are common in the Philippines at this time of the year, but Trami's rains were unusually heavy, the state weather bureau said.

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 Violent clashes erupted in Maputo on Monday as Mozambican police fired tear gas and live ammunition at opposition supporters, marking a dramatic escalation in post-election tensions following the suspicious deaths of two opposition figures. Independent presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane, who had called for a nationwide shutdown to protest alleged electoral fraud, was forced to flee when police fired tear gas during his press conference near the site where his lawyer and a senior party official were killed Friday night. "The whole of last night, police cars were at my doorstep," Mondlane told reporters before the incident.

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African nations are steadily joining the global space race, driven by the falling costs of satellite launches and the increasing relevance of satellite technology for development. On August 16, 2024, Senegal marked a milestone by launching its first satellite, GaindeSAT-1A, from California aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. This CubeSat, which was developed in collaboration with France’s Montpellier University, aims to enhance telecommunications and earth observation. President Bassirou Diomaye Faye called this a major step toward “technological sovereignty,” showing off the country’s ambitions in space technology.

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Dockworkers at the port in Montreal, the second-largest in Canada, ended a partial three-day strike as scheduled on Thursday, officials confirmed, with both sides summoned to mediation. The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), 85,000 members strong, had launched its first strike since 1977 after weeks of deadlocked negotiations over a six-year labor agreement.

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Spain's tourism boom reached record levels this summer, welcoming 21.8 million international visitors, according to official data released on Wednesday. However, the influx of tourists has sparked protests in some areas, highlighting the challenges of managing such a surge in visitor numbers. That figure was a 7.3 percent rise on the summer of 2023, the national statistics institute (INE) said. Spain, the world's second most popular tourist destination after France, received 10.9 million visitors in July and as many again in August, INE said.