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Dubai (AFP) – Dubai’s Expo-2020 opens for visitors, biggest event since pandemic

Lemesos (Cyprus) (AFP) – 35-year-old double world champion Jennifer Wendland gives an insight into freediving while competing at the AIDA World Championships off the coast of the Cypriot port town of Limassol.

Idlib (Syria) (AFP) – Hospitals in Syria’s rebel-held city of Idlib are struggling to keep up with incoming Covid-19 cases as the number of those infected with the deadly virus soar to critical levels across the country. In the Idlib region, where around half of the more than three million residents have been displaced by conflict, the number of recorded daily infections has increased sharply and now often tops 1,000 a day.

Saint-Aignan (France) (AFP) – The twin pandas born at France’s Beauval zoo, who will turn two months old on October 2, have “opened their eyes recently” and now weigh more than 2.8 kg.

Sydney (AFP) – The leader of Australia’s most populous state resigns amid a corruption investigation, leaving Sydneysiders — deep in months of lockdown — without a political leader. A state corruption watchdog is investigating allegations including whether she favoured a former boyfriend, then a member of parliament, in the awarding of grants in his electorate. The projects included funding for the Australian Clay Target Association and the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in Wagga Wagga, a small New South Wales town. Berejiklian denied the allegations.

Kabul (AFP) – Regional Red Cross director, Alexander Matheou, warns that a dire lack of funding is pushing Afghanistan’s health system to the brink. Devastated by more than four decades of war, the Afghan economy has all but ground to a halt since the Taliban’s takeover last month, amid sanctions and a cutoff in foreign aid. This has taken a particularly heavy toll on the health sector, which was primarily run by NGOs with internal funding before the Taliban came to power.

Fortaleza (Brazil) (AFP) – When Nicole Oliveira was just learning to walk, she would throw up her arms to reach for the stars in the sky. Today, at just 8 years of age, the Brazilian girl is known as the world’s youngest astronomer, looking for asteroids as part of a NASA-affiliated program, attending international seminars and meeting with her country’s top space and science figures.

Brazzaville (AFP) – The World Health Organization again apologises to the victims who suffered rape and sexual abuse by workers sent to fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2018 to 2020.

Rennes (France) (AFP) – At the Rennes women’s prison in western France, a team of inmates and guards are working hard to beat the French indoor rowing record for the most kilometres covered in 24 hours, a challenge that offers a moment of escape, cohesion and self-improvement.

Islamorada (United States) (AFP) – Biologists in Florida are fighting to save the species that make up the only coral reef in the United States’ continental waters. They’ve recreated the coral reef habitat found in the waters off the southern tip of the state in huge aquariums in a bid to preserve it from a disease that is affecting the coral in the wild. Stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD, has killed about half of stony coral species.

La Palma Island (Spain) (AFP) – of lava at night Lava from the erupting volcano on La Palma in the Canary Islands that began cascading into the ocean 36 hours ago already covers more than 25 acres at sea. Since it began on September 19, the dramatic eruption has forced thousands out of their homes, while lava has destroyed hundreds of houses, businesses and huge swathes of banana plantations.

Kabul (AFP) – Taliban fighters laugh and whoop onboard a pirate ship ride at an amusement park in the west of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul. An incongruous scene, and one that might have been unimaginable during the group’s brutally oppressive reign in the 1990s. But while the Islamist hardliners have promised a more moderate rule this time, many Afghans have already seen their freedoms curbed.