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Rescuers in Morocco are racing to dig survivors out of rubble after the country’s worst earthquake in a century flattened homes and buildings, killing at least 2,000 people. The magnitude-6.8 quake struck in the mountains south of Marrakesh, an ancient city that is a popular tourist destination. The quake particularly devastated communities in the Atlas Mountains, where the full extent of the damage is still unknown. Debris has blocked some of the region’s roads, making it difficult for rescue crews to reach remote communities. Frantic rescue effortsIn some remote areas, people sifted through debris with their bare hands to search for survivors.

Locations: Morocco, Marrakesh

☆ For a Woman Bereaved in Quake, First Came Shock and Then a Wail.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-10 | by ( Vivian Yee | More About Vivian Yee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

First came the news, then shock and then a scream. In the small town of Amizmiz in southern Morocco on Sunday, a woman let out a piercing cry as she absorbed the information that her two brothers had been killed in the devastating earthquake. More than 2,000 people were killed in the quake that hit Morocco on Friday night, according to the authorities. Hardest hit was the province of Al Haouz, which is home to Amizmiz, where a small crowd was growing to comfort the crying woman. Once his aunt heard what had happened to her brothers, he said, she had attempted to get as close as possible to their town.

Persons: Al Haouz, Lacher Anflouss, Anflouss Locations: Amizmiz, Morocco, Al, Atlas

African leaders allied with Russia had grown used to dealing with Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the swaggering, profane mercenary leader who traveled the continent by private jet, offering to prop up shaky regimes with guns and propaganda in return for gold and diamonds. But the Russian delegation that toured three African countries last week was led by a very different figure, the starchy deputy defense minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov. Dressed in a khaki uniform and a “telnyashka” — the horizontally-striped undergarment of Russian armed forces — he signaled conformity and restraint, giving assurances wrapped in polite language. “We will do our best to help you,” he said at a news conference in Burkina Faso. The contrast with the flamboyant Mr. Prigozhin could not have been sharper, and it aligned with the message the Kremlin was delivering: After Mr. Prigozhin’s death in a plane crash last month, Russia’s operations in Africa were coming under new management.

Persons: Yevgeny V, Yunus, bek Yevkurov, —, ”, Prigozhin, Prigozhin’s Locations: Russia, Burkina Faso, Africa

☆ In Push to Modernize Cairo, Cultural Gems and Green Spaces Razed
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-26 | by ( Vivian Yee | More About Vivian Yee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Gardens have vanished, and with them many of Cairo’s trees. Few cities live and breathe antiquity like Cairo, a sun-strafed, traffic-choked desert metropolis jammed with roughly 22 million people. But President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is modernizing this superannuated city, fast. And he considers the construction as one of the major accomplishments of his tenure. “There is not a single place in Egypt that has not been touched by the hand of development,” Mr. el-Sisi proclaimed in a recent speech.

Persons: Abdel Fattah el, Mr, Sisi Locations: Cairo, Egypt

Dozens of countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS, a group encompassing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that views itself as a counterweight to the West, and is meeting this week in Johannesburg. Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are thought to be among those most likely to be admitted. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is said to be concerned about adding nations close to Beijing; India and China have border disputes and tend to consider each other potential adversaries. Here is a look at some of the nations vying to join. Saudi ArabiaThe addition to BRICS of Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s leading oil producers, would add economic clout to the group and bolster its chances of positioning itself as a rival to the U.S.-led financial order.

Persons: Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi Locations: BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Johannesburg, Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Beijing, U.S

☆ In Egypt, Public Classrooms Are Empty as Private Tutors Get Rich
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-06 | by ( Vivian Yee | More About Vivian Yee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Asked what classes were like in her last year of high school, the fateful period when students across the country cram for Egypt’s life-defining national exams, Nermin Abouzeid looked blank for a second. “We don’t actually know because she never went to high school,” explained her mother, Manal Abouzeid, 47. A child of the dusty alleyways of a lower-middle-class neighborhood of Cairo, she was determined, by middle school, to become a cardiologist. But medical schools accept only the top scorers on the national exams. She abandoned Egypt’s chronically overcrowded and underfunded schools midway through middle school, joining millions of other students in private tutoring, where the same teachers who were paid too little at school to bother teaching could make multiples of their day-job salaries on exam-prep classes.

Persons: Nermin Abouzeid, ”, Manal Abouzeid Locations: Cairo

When the government in Iran ordered the nation to shut down for two days starting on Wednesday to conserve energy and protect public health because of “unprecedented” broiling summer heat, Iranians and experts alike quickly discerned another, unspoken reason for the enforced holiday. Iran simply does not have enough natural gas, or a strong enough power grid, to keep all the lights on despite sitting on the second-largest reserves of natural gas in the world. And, as skeptical residents pointed out, much of Iran experiences blistering heat every year, especially in the south, which has already endured debilitating temperatures this summer. “I don’t feel any temperature difference at all,” said a 42-year-old bookstore worker named Nima in Tehran, the capital. “This is not unprecedented at all.”

Persons: ”, Nima Locations: Iran, Tehran, “

Wildfires devouring swaths of Algeria’s Mediterranean coast have killed 34 people over two days, the Algerian authorities said on Tuesday, as an extreme heat wave sears North Africa, Southern Europe and the sea between them. The dead include 10 soldiers who were aiding rescue efforts across Algeria’s forested Kabylia region, the Algerian Interior Ministry said. Another 16 people died in the fires in the village of Ath Oussalah, according to Berber TV, a local broadcaster. “I wish her home burned down but she was still alive,” the woman told onlookers in the village. Plumes of smoke rose from at least 16 cities east of the capital, Algiers, including Bejaia, Jijel and Tizi Ouzou.

Persons: “ Organizations: Algerian Interior Ministry Locations: North Africa, Southern Europe, Kabylia, Algerian, Ath Oussalah, Algiers

☆ It’s Scorching in Iran, and There’s Less and Less Water to Help
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-23 | by ( Vivian Yee | More About Vivian Yee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For a month and 10 days of unrelenting summer heat, Sepideh, a physician in southern Iran, and her dentist husband have left the house only for work (and only in the mornings) and for groceries (and only when the fridge is utterly bare). At one point last week, her car’s dashboard thermometer read 57 degrees Celsius, about 135 degrees Fahrenheit. “Only 57 degrees!” she posted. A combination of widening poverty and rising heat is crushing much of southern Iran, where sprawling desert, joined with the humidity of the nearby Persian Gulf, is especially prone to heat waves and droughts intensified by climate change. Although the mercury was lower elsewhere in the country, the misery has still been great.

Persons: Iran’s, Kaveh Madani Locations: Iran, Persian, United Nations

☆ Stranded in a Strange Land, and Waiting for Death
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-20 | by ( Vivian Yee | More About Vivian Yee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For nearly three weeks now, more than 1,000 men, women and children from Africa have been clinging to survival in the no-man’s lands at Tunisia’s borders. A few scrubby trees offer fitful shade, videos taken by migrants show, and border guards from neighboring Libya and Tunisian aid workers occasionally drop off water and a bit of bread. Over and over, they sent pleas for help from the dwindling number of phones they managed to keep charged:“Please help us. We are dying,” one wrote to The New York Times on Saturday. If there’s any way you can help us …”By Sunday, the text messages had stopped.

Persons: ” Organizations: The New York Times Locations: Africa, Tunisia’s, Libya, Sfax, Europe, North Africa

☆ Egyptian Graduate Student and Rights Advocate Is Jailed by Egypt
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Vivian Yee | More About Vivian Yee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

An Egyptian graduate student and human rights advocate accused of spreading “fake news” was sentenced to three years in prison in Egypt on Tuesday, a harsh conclusion to a case that had inspired a mass outpouring of support in Italy, where he studied, and in Egypt. Just recently, the student, Patrick Zaki, had earned a master’s degree with distinction, defending his thesis to professors at the University of Bologna by videoconference because Egypt had barred him from traveling. Mr. Zaki was convicted of disseminating fake news — a charge prosecutors routinely bring against Egyptians who speak up about political matters — for a 2019 article he published online describing his experiences as a member of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. As soon as the verdict was announced, Mr. Zaki, who was released from pretrial detention in December 2021, was rearrested in the courtroom, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the rights group where he had worked as a researcher.

Persons: ”, Patrick Zaki, Zaki Organizations: University of Bologna, Christian, Egyptian, Personal Rights Locations: Egypt, Italy, videoconference

Iran is once again deploying police officers on the streets to enforce its conservative dress code for women, which many have flouted since the protest movement that rattled the country began last fall, according to state news media and social media posts. Months into the protests, Iran quietly withdrew the morality police from the streets in an apparent concession to try to calm the nationwide upheaval against the government. The protests began last September after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, died in custody after the morality police accused her of violating the dress code and arrested her on a Tehran street. A spokesman for Iran’s police force, Gen. Saeed Montazer al-Mahdi, said on Sunday that effective immediately, police officers would begin patrolling to “deal with those who, unfortunately, regardless of the consequences of dressing outside the norm, still insist on breaking the norm.” He added that the patrols would “expand public security and strengthen the foundation of the family.”He said the police would first warn people caught breaking the hijab law governing dress, which requires women to cover their hair and wear long, loose clothing that hides the shape of their bodies. Those who still refused to comply, he said, would be prosecuted.

Persons: Mahsa Amini, Saeed Montazer al, Mahdi, ” Locations: Iran, Tehran

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