MIGRANT TRAINS BLOCKED IN BUDAPEST
Photo: Sven Hoppe/DPA/ZUMA
Thousands of asylum seekers — mostly Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war — have reached Munich, in Germany, and Vienna, in Austria, after leaving the Hungarian capital of Budapest by train Monday in what German daily Die Welt cited as the biggest movement of people in Europe since World War II. The number of migrants reaching Europe is reaching record levels, with 107,500 arriving in July alone, the BBC reports.
- By Tuesday morning, Hungary began blocking trains from its main rail terminal in Budapest and clearing train stations of hundreds of migrants trying to board the western-bound trains. Read more here in Worldcrunch’s Extra! feature from Budapest’s Metropol daily.
- Germany is expected to receive at least 800,000 asylum seekers this year. Reuters quoted German Chancellor Angela Merkel as saying that the EU failing to find greater shares in the migrant crisis could threaten the Schengen area: “If we don’t succeed in fairly distributing refugees then of course the Schengen question will be on the agenda,” she told a news conference in Berlin. “We stand before a huge national challenge…not only for days or months but for a long period of time.”
- About 20,000 people also marched in support of migrants in Vienna Monday, the AFP reports. On Thursday, 71 migrants were found dead in a truck on an Austrian highway. Authorities have since introduced additional road checks.
- About 3,650 migrants arrived in the Austrian capital, according to The Local, and most continued to Germany.
PAKISTAN SUICIDE ATTACK
A suicide bomber killed at least six people, including four tribal police officers and wounded another 31 Tuesday outside a government office in the Pakistani town of Jamrud, in the northwestern Khyber tribal area, The Express Tribune quoted officials as saying. Pakistani security forces have been fighting Taliban forces in the volatile Khyber Agency for the past year in an attempt to suppress the decade-long insurgency.
AL-SHABAAB ATTACK SOMALI AFRICAN UNION BASE
Militants of the Islamist al-Shabaab group attacked an African Union base early Tuesday in the town of Janaale, in southern Somalia, Al Jazeera quoted a spokesman of the armed organization as saying. After breaching the entrance of the base with a car bomb, fighters allegedly stormed the base, killing dozens of African Union soldiers. These reports have however not been confirmed and al-Shabaab has exaggerated the number of victims in the past.
UKRAINE OFFICER KILLED IN KIEV PROTESTS
A National Guard officer was killed and more than 100 were wounded, including several seriously, when a grenade was thrown at them from a crowd of far-right and nationalist protesters outside the parliament in Kiev, the Kyiv Post reports. The Ukrainian interior minister Arsen Avakov said the 25-year-old officer died from shrapnel wounds in hospital. Anton Gerashchenko, an interior ministry advisor, wrote on Facebook that several officers also suffered gunshot wounds. The demonstrators, mostly from the far-right political party Svoboda, which was also part of last year’s Maidan movement, were protesting a decentralization reform that was being voted by lawmakers that would give more autonomy to regions, including those facing an insurgency from pro-Russian separatists.
ON THIS DAY
[rebelmouse-image 27089343 original_size=”325×247″ expand=1]
Tokio Hotel and Louis XIV left their mark on September 1. Check out the 57-second video shot of history.
SECOND SUSPECT ARRESTED OVER THAI BLAST
A second foreign man has been arrested by Thai authorities on suspicion of involvement in the Aug. 17 bombing in Bangkok that left 20 dead, Al Jazeera reports. The Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said the man was arrested at a checkpoint on the Cambodian border.
VERBATIM
“On this issue — of all issues — there is such a thing as being too late,” U.S. President Barack Obama said late Monday during a visit to Alaska about the need for climate action, USA Today reports. This is part of a three-day presidential trip to Alaska during which the president is also set to take part in the television show Running Wild with Bear Grylls, according to NBC.
THAI COURT CLEARS REPORTERS IN NAVY DEFAMATION CASE
Australian Alan Morison and Thai Chutima Sidasathian, two journalists working for the website Phuketwan were acquitted by a court in Phuket Tuesday after they were accused of defamation by the Thai navy, the Bangkok Post reports. In a report published in 2013, the two journalists implicated the navy in human trafficking. “We hope it is sign of Thailand’s growing maturity and that the media and military can live side by side,” Morison was quoted as saying by Phuketwan.
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
Swiss daily Le Temps has a thorough rundown about all the misconceptions floating around about the so-called theory of evolution. (For starters, it’s not even a theory…) “Another common but false idea is that by controlling the environment so much, mankind freed itself from evolutionary pressure. But our recent genetic history proves that we are evolving, as the appearance of lactose tolerance shows …”
Read the full article, 10 Misconceptions About The Theory Of Evolution.
MY GRAND-PÈRE’S WORLD
[rebelmouse-image 27089344 original_size=”610×600″ expand=1]
YOU’RE A VILLAIN, HARRY
What if Harry Potter turned out to be the bad guy? This truly creeper trailer imagines a revenge-thirsty boy wizard.