Hanoï (AFP) – Exhausted after 12 hours of cooking, Nguyen Thi Thuy Hong gently unpeels the last of five leaves encasing a squishy, sticky rice cake known as “banh chung” — a Lunar New Year delicacy in Vietnam. Thi Thuy Hong has made the dish for 40 years, sticking with a tradition that many families have moved away from.
Pont-Réan (France) (AFP) – Flood waters have reached levels unseen in decades in western France, as the Ille-et-Vilaine region was placed on red alert for flooding on Tuesday. Heavy rainfall from Storm Herminia caused the worst flooding in 40 years in Rennes and the surrounding area.
Nations unies (États-Unis) (AFP) – Israel will cease all contact with the UN’s Palestinian relief agency UNRWA and any other body acting on its behalf, Israel’s envoy to the UN says after repeatedly accusing the organization of undermining its security.
Bogotá (AFP) – Images released by the Colombian Foreign Ministry show Colombian migrants deported by the United States disembarking from a military plane at the Catam military airport on the outskirts of Bogota. IMAGES
Krakau (AFP) – Commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day “is both a sombre and indeed a sacred moment,” says Britain’s King Charles III as he visits the Jewish community centre in Krakow, Poland, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Pont-Réan (AFP) – France has placed swathes of Brittany in the west of the country on red weather alert as a violent storm brings flood levels not seen in decades. “There’s a risk that the river will continue to rise until perhaps tomorrow,” says Dominique Delamarre, mayor of flood-hit town Guichen Pont-Réan, near the city of Rennes.
Peking (AFP) – Beijing residents and visitors skate on one of the Chinese capital’s frozen lakes ahead of the Lunar New Year, as the country still struggles to cement its economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, beset by a property sector crisis, chronically low consumption and high youth unemployment. “I hope the Year of the Snake will be better than the Year of the Dragon,” says export trade worker Zhong Haiping.
Gaza (AFP) – “We feel happy but at the same time we’re sad because we lost many of our loved ones,” says Entissar Al-Saeedi, one of thousands of Gazans who have begun streaming towards the north of the war-battered Gaza Strip after Israel and Hamas said they had reached a deal for the release of another six hostages. On 27 January, US President Donald Trump floated an idea to “clean out” Gaza and resettle Palestinians in Jordan and Egypt, drawing condemnation from regional leaders.
Bogotá (AFP) – Scene outside the US embassy in Colombian capital of Bogota, after the country backed down and agreed to accept deported citizens sent on US military aircraft. President Donald Trump threatened painful tariffs to punish the defiance to his mass deportation plans. The issuance of visas for Colombians is still suspended. IMAGES
Peking (AFP) – China dismisses claims that the Covid-19 pandemic came from a lab, after US intelligence said it believed the virus had a “research-related origin” rather than being transmitted by animals.
Islamabad (AFP) – Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi are appealing their convictions for graft, his lawyer says. Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month in the latest case to be brought against them.
Kapstadt (AFP) – Japanese adventurer Gump Suzuki arrives in Cape Town at the end of a more than six thousand kilometre journey across Africa whilst pulling a rickshaw. Suzuki began his African odyssey last summer in Kenya and has a large following on social media where he has shared regular updates of his adventures. It has been a “very good experience,” he tells AFP, despite some hairy moments such as seeing a lion and a truck hitting his rickshaw.
