The winter storms that battered the UK caused the greatest loss of trees since the Great Storm of 1987 in some areas, the National Trust has said. More than 50 of the trust’s sites were surveyed, with some losing hundreds of trees including valued ancient specimens. Many trees were uprooted and blown over rather than snapped, due to the saturated ground. The trust said that despite the damage, the losses […]

Chinese state television described the incident as a “violent terror attack” as Mariko Oi reports An attack by knife-wielding men at a railway station in Kunming in south-west China has left at least 29 dead, the state news agency Xinhua says. Another 130 people were wounded in what authorities described as an “organised, premeditated, violent terrorist attack”. Four suspects were shot dead and others are being sought, Xinhua said. City […]

The snow squall that swept through southwestern Ontario on Thursday morning may have only dusted the region with snow as it sped along, but the 96-vehicle collision it left in its wake demonstrates one of the true dangers of this common winter phenomenon. As many residents of southwestern Ontario know, seeing the word ‘squalls’ in the weather forecast can easily mean a rough day of snarled traffic and shoveling through […]

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Islamist group live-tweeted punishment of a thief in northern Syria Photos were posted online showing a man having his hand chopped off Group claimed the man requested the punishment to ‘cleanse him of sin’ A group of Syrian Islamist militants posted a series of photographs of a man having his hand cut off in a live-update on Twitter. The live-feed of the amputation, which was carried out […]

Russian soldiers have occupied two key airports in Ukraine’s restive pro-Russia region of Crimea, Ukraine’s acting interior minister said Friday. Soldiers wearing camouflage and bearing automatic weapons took up positions at Belbek Airport in Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and at the airport in Simferopol, the region’s capital, Arsen Avakov said. He said the soldiers’ uniforms bore no identifying marks “but they do not hide their affiliation with […]

“Now, gimme all your money or I’ll take this meat cleaver and chop you to death!” Three words: Bank. Robbery. Fail. This viral video showcases a real ‘meat-head’ trying to rob a bank with a meat cleaver. Oh yes, a meat cleaver. If you think that’s funny, then clearly you are on the same page as the bank teller who is laughing at the man from behind the glass. Especially […]

You’d be lying if you said you haven’t made a few poor decisions while driving. Well, if you live in Calgary, it’s possible those bad driving habits have been caught on camera and posted to YouTube by Jan Monson. Monson, who makes a daily commute across Calgary, stopped scolding the idiots he spotted on the road and started recording them instead. He installed a dash-cam on his vehicle so that […]

The China blog has featured pollution more than once this week – and we make no apologies for that. The pollution currently blanketing northern China is an extraordinary and unnatural phenomenon. The air quality is so bad it’s comparable to living near a forest fire. The scale of the consequences to human health are only beginning to be understood. Air pollution is thought to cut life expectancy in northern China […]

  Islamist militants from the Boko Haram group in north-eastern Nigeria have attacked a school and shot some students, the military has said. Dozens of pupils are reported to have been killed. Police told Reuters that all the dead were boys and that some of the bodies “were burned to ashes”. The attack took place in troubled Yobe state, the military said. Residents of the town of Buni Yadi said […]

The DC-10, which makes its final passenger flight later, has been labelled a “death trap”, hailed as a “workhorse” and even immortalised in a Clash song. For some, the controversial aircraft’s last landing at Birmingham Airport will mark the end of an era in consumer aviation. But how will the rest of the world remember it? First put into service in 1971, the American-made “trijet” was one of several aircraft […]