Iraq’s telecoms ministry said it has blocked the Telegram messaging app over national security concerns and in order to preserve the integrity of users’ personal data, which it said the app had mishandled.

The app is widely used in Iraq for messaging but also as a source of news and for sharing content.

Some channels contain large amounts of personal data including the names, addresses and family ties of Iraqis.

The ministry said in a statement it had asked the app to close down “platforms that leak the data of the official state institutions and the personal data of citizens… but the company did not respond and did not interact with any of these requests.”

“The Ministry of Communications affirms its respect for citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and communication, without prejudice to the security of the state and its institutions,” the statement said.

Environmentalists warn that the Brazilian Amazon could be in for a bad burning season despite a drop in deforestation this year, as years of accumulated destruction and the arrival of El Nino could turn swathes of the jungle into a tinderbox.

Flying near the city of Porto Velho this week to monitor the world’s largest rainforest, a Greenpeace team spotted several fires in the area during its hottest period of the year, which runs from July to September.

“We are now in the middle of the Amazonian summer, when we usually see an increase in fires,” said Greenpeace Brasil spokesman Romulo Batista, looking out over the forest from an airplane traveling over Amazonas state.

The height of the annual burning season usually falls in August and September, when fires tend to spike as rains subside, allowing ranchers and farmers to set fire to deforested areas.

In 2023, environmentalists and experts are on heightened alert, as the fire conditions may be aggravated by the El Nino weather pattern, which is expected to strengthen in October.

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon dropped 43% in the first seven months of the year, according to preliminary government data, boosting President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s credibility as a regional voice for conservation.

But environmentalists say his government cannot let its guard down.

“It’s important (to keep control) because in the last four years large areas were deforested,” Batista said. “So there is a lot of organic material in the soil that can dry out and favor fires.”

Lula took office in January promising to end deforestation by 2030 after destruction surged under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who slashed environmental protection efforts during his 2019-2022 presidency.

Lula is set to gather next week with leaders of Amazonian countries for a summit in northern Brazil to discuss ways to protect the rainforest.

Nearly 1 million people in China’s northern Hebei province were relocated after record rains forced authorities to channel water from swollen rivers to some populated areas for storage, sparking anger online over the homes sacrificed to save Beijing.

The vast Hai River basin covers an area the size of Poland that includes Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin.

Over a span of one week from late July, the region with a population totalling 110 million experienced its most serious flooding in six decades, with Hebei, particularly Baoding prefecture, the worst hit.

According to flood control laws, when basin-wide flooding causes reservoirs, the first line of defence, to exceed their limits, water may be temporarily channelled to so-called “flood storage areas” – including low-lying populated land.

On July 31, Hebei province opened seven of its 13 designated flood storage areas, including two in the city of Zhuozhou in Baoding south of Beijing and north of Xiongan, a zone President Xi Jinping aims to develop into an economic powerhouse serving Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin.

On Aug. 1, Hebei’s Communist Party Secretary Ni Yuefeng called Xiongan a top priority for the province’s flood prevention work, according to local state media.

On his visit to flood storage areas in Baoding, Ni added that it was necessary to reduce the pressure on Beijing’s flood control and create a “moat” for the Chinese capital.

“Beijing should foot the bill”, wrote a netizen on the popular Chinese microblog Weibo.

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In other posts on Zhuozhou, netizens said residents weren’t aware they lived in a flood storage area and the rights of the minority had been sacrificed.

“I’d like to know, among all the people living in flood storage areas across the country, how many of them know they are living in such areas?” one angry netizen asked.

Phone calls to the Hebei provincial government on Sunday seeking comment went unanswered. It did not immediately respond to an email.

Record-breaking rains in Baoding led to the overflowing of 67 of its 83 small reservoirs and water in all of its 10 large reservoirs rising to dangerous levels, the Baoding government said on Saturday.

Organisers were forced on Sunday to cancel the Open Water Swimming World Cup in Paris, after heavy rainfall caused the water quality in the Seine river to dip below minimum health standards.

The river is due to be the venue for marathon swimming at next year’s Olympic Games, and global swimming federation World Aquatics said “extra work” was needed to ensure back-up plans were in place for that.

“Disappointed is the right word,” French Swimming Federation head Gilles Sezionale said on local radio. “First and foremost disappointed for the athletes, who were dreaming of competing in one of the most beautiful locations in the world.”

Participants had been barred from morning training on Friday for the same reason.

Saturday’s women’s 10 kilometre race – a qualifying event for the Olympics – had originally been postponed to Sunday, when the Federation and World Aquatics cancelled both it and the equivalent men’s race.

“It’s obvious that extra work is required with Paris 2024 and local authorities to guarantee solid emergency plans are set up for next year,” said World Aquatics.

The Olympics committee said in a separate statement that new infrastructure would be up and running by summer 2024, which should ensure better water quality and make the Seine swimmable.

An 80 billion euro ($88 billion) underground overflow basin designed to prevent bacterial contamination of the river by heavy rains is expected to be completed before the games.

A Canadian government agency has guaranteed fresh commercial loans of up to C$3 billion ($2.2 billion) to the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project that has suffered repeated cost overruns.

The information disclosed by Export Development Canada (EDC) showed that a new loan guarantee of C$2.75-C$3 billion was signed in July, though it first appeared on EDC’s website late on Friday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government bought the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018 from Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI.N) to ensure the expansion project got built and provided a C$10 billion loan guarantee to TMC.

It is meant to unlock Asian markets for Canadian oil, which is mostly exported to the United States now. But the project has been hampered by regulatory obstacles, environmental opposition, and construction delays, and is now anticipated to cost C$30.9 billion, more than quadrupling the C$7.4 billion budgeted in 2017.

The cost blowout and the impact of taxpayer has made the government’s ongoing support a contentious issue. Last year, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said that no more public funds would be committed in the project, and TMC has stated that it is looking for external funding.

Critics have also slammed the ownership of a pipeline project by the Liberal government, which they argue runs counter to Trudeau’s ambitious climate goals.

TMC had received a up to C$3 billion loan guarantee between late March and early May this year and had received a C$10 billion loan guarantee in 2022 from the federal government.

Canada’s finance ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the fresh loan guarantee. In June, a finance ministry spokesperson said the loan guarantee was “common practice” and did not reflect any new public spending.

The project is expected to start shipping oil in the first quarter of 2024, and will nearly tripling the flow of crude from Alberta’s oil sands to Burnaby, British Columbia, to 890,000 barrels per day.

State-owned Saudi Arabian Airlines has launched new direct flights connecting Riyadh and Jeddah with the Chinese capital Beijing, Saudi state news agency SPA said on Sunday.

The inaugural flight from Jeddah to Beijing took off on Friday, with the Riyadh-Beijing flight scheduled to commence on Sunday, SPA said.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has proposed new procedures to improve the safety of Hawaii tourist sightseeing flights by plane and helicopter after a series of fatal crashes including one in 2019 that killed seven people in bad weather.

The FAA proposed a new process for air tour operators to obtain authorization to safely descend below specific altitudes to avoid flying into bad weather.

FAA Acting Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety David Boulter said the new process will help prevent situations in which pilots encounter poor visibility and become disoriented.

The regulatory agency also unveiled proposals to bolster safety management practices for Hawaii air tours including pilot training and aircraft equipment. The new safeguards are expected to be in place in early 2024.

The FAA also is encouraging Hawaii air tour operators to adopt Safety Management Systems – programs to manage risks and assure the effectiveness of safety controls – while the agency finalizes rules to mandate them.

The National Transportation Safety Board last year cited the FAA decision not to implement some safety recommendations as contributing to the cause of a fatal Hawaii air tour helicopter crash that killed seven people in December 2019.

​The seven-seat Airbus AS350 B2 helicopter crashed in deteriorating weather in a remote area of wooded terrain near Kekaha, Hawaii. The NTSB said the highly experienced, 69-year-old pilot flew into a mountainous region and was unable to exit the area of limited visibility.

From 2000 through 2019, there were 11 fatal helicopter tour crashes resulting in 45 deaths in Hawaii, according to government statistics.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said last year the safety board previously made 11 recommendations to the FAA to prevent accidents like the one in 2019 but they were not adopted.

FAA regulations require Hawaii air tour operators to fly at least at 1,500 feet (457 meters) above the surface unless they have authorization to fly lower. The proposed new process would help operators develop safety plans, the FAA said.

Lamela Building is a residential building, one of the most known buildings located in the city of Zenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The building itself is the tallest standing structure in the city, which has 27 floors, and in total is almost 100 meters (328 feet) tall.

The architectural style of the building is one that resembles the time in which was built.

At the time when in Yugoslavia the Communist party was in power, the Brutalist style was forced more and more.

This building has a distinctive Brutalist style, designed by the architect Slobodan Jovandić from Plan Company, who has designed this interesting building in six different cascading buildings with a different height.

The construction firm which built it is called Izgradnja from the same city.

The first plans were for the building to have 30 floors, nonetheless, due to the air pollution at that height the floor plan was reduced to 27 floors. There are 232 different apartments in the building, and at the bottom there are offices and some stores.

This tall building has been built little bit away from the main boulevard with the idea for the boulevard to be enlarged, but this plan did not come through.

The official ending of the building’s construction was in 1976, when the authorities described the building as one of the biggest powerful and successful symbols of the socialist system.

Nowadays, most of the Zenica citizens dislike the building, even though it is the tallest in the city and part of one long past, it is alluring for the foreigners who come to visit the city.