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A Turkish mother and three of her children were pulled on Saturday from under the rubble of a collapsed building where they had been trapped for almost 18 hours, following a powerful earthquake that killed at least 27 people.

Efforts were continuing to free a fourth child, TV images showed.

Friday’s earthquake flattened at least 20 buildings in the Aegean port city of Izmir, where the rescue took place. Environment Minister Murat Kurum said some 100 people had been freed so far.

Metro reports officials said the quake killed 25 people in coastal areas in Turkey’s west, while two teenagers – a boy and a girl – died on the Greek island of Samos after a wall collapsed on them.

More than 800 people were injured in Turkey, and the area had been hit by some 520 aftershocks, the country’s disaster agency said.

Search and rescue operations were complete in eight buildings in Izmir, while they continued in nine others, officials said.

At least 21 school children were killed and more injured following a road accident involving a fully-loaded school bus in Nigeria’s southeastern state of Enugu, said an official on Thursday.

The accident occurred on Wednesday on the old Enugu-Okigwe road in the southern state, said Ogbonnaya Kalu, a commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) in Enugu.

Kalu told Xinhua that the school children were on their way from school when a truck lost control and rammed into their bus.

A total of 64 passengers, including two teachers, were on the bus at the time of the incident, the FRSC official said.

Other injured passengers are being treated in a nearby hospital, he added.

Witnesses said the driver of the truck fled the scene immediately after the incident.

Local police said an investigation has been launched into the incident. 

Cameroon football legend Geremi Njitap says African countries must not be allowed to stage Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in Europe during the coronavirus pandemic.There have been reports that Senegal and Guinea-Bissau were “discussing” moving back-to-back matches during November from Dakar and Bissau to Portugal.

Senegal had to postpone at the last minute this month a warm-up match when eight of the visiting Mauritania delegation tested positive for Covid-19.
However, that was the only friendly international in the continent during October to be cancelled while two in Portugal and one in Turkey involving African teams were called off due to coronavirus.
Answering a question from AFP at a videoconference organized by the Netherlands-based global professional footballers’ union FIFPro, Geremi said: “I do not believe CAF will allow that.

“This is an African competition and there is no way matches can be played in Europe,” said the former Real Madrid, Chelsea, and Cameroon defender-cum-midfielder and FIFPro board member.
“Of course, staging qualifiers in Europe would be better for most of the players because that is where they are based.
“I have no objection to friendly internationals involving African countries being staged in Europe, but not Cup of Nations nor World Cup qualifiers.  
“African football supporters will not accept that — they want to cheer their heroes on even if the numbers at grounds may be severely limited by the pandemic.”
FIFPro general secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann warned that health protocols “do not change one bit” whether matches are staged in Africa or Europe.

“It is very important to make clear that the responsibilities and obligations of federations in terms of health protocols do not change.
“During the international window this month, many footballers in Europe contracted the virus after being with national teams.
“Irrespective of whether matches are staged in Africa or Europe, federations need to do a better job than they did this month when providing health safeguards.
“Otherwise, there is a big risk of many positive cases which can impact on how Africa proceeds with qualifying for the Cup of Nations and World Cup.”

There is 48 Cup of Nations qualifiers scheduled between November 9 and 17, including defending champions Algeria playing Zimbabwe at home and away.
Geremi was also asked if he agreed with 1995 World, European and African Footballer of the Year and now Liberia president George Weah that Covid-19 posed a huge threat to African football.  
“Football is more than a religion in Africa and an Africa without football is unimaginable,” said the former star who made 118 appearances for the Cameroon national team, the Indomitable Lions.
“Kids love football, and many poor families see the sport as a path to a better life if a child can develop their talents and secure a professional contract.

“Governments and companies cannot stop putting money into football,” he said, reacting to the fears of Weah that there will be a “large drop-off” in funding from the public and private sectors.
“Where these (sponsorships) no longer exist, many clubs will collapse and leagues will close permanently,” Weah told a recent videoconference organised by the Africa Sports Ventures group.
“It is my considered opinion that the future of the sport in Africa is bleak, and not guaranteed to recover,” said the ex-Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Chelsea, Manchester City, and Marseille forward.
“Health and economic recovery take absolute priority, however, it is important that the global funding being raised should recognise the social importance of sport.”

Berlin’s new airport will finally welcome passengers after an eight-year delay, opening its doors just as fallout from the coronavirus hammers travel demand.

The limestone floors, according to Bloomberg, have been polished smooth, the ticket counters buffed and shops stocked with wares as the Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport, known by its airport code BER, prepares for its inaugural flight on Saturday.

But the facility will just be a stunted version of the original plan. A second terminal won’t open for now because it’s not needed in the midst of the crisis.

“No one would build a new airport now,” said Cord Schellenberg, a Hamburg-based aviation analyst. “But maybe that’s the airport’s opportunity — it’s getting somewhat of a soft opening, giving authorities time to ensure all is running smoothly.”

The airport’s history is an embarrassing tale for Germany’s exalted reputation for punctuality and engineering prowess. Construction started in 2006, and the planned launch in June 2012 was scrapped just weeks in advance, with moving trucks ready to roll and tickets issued.

Initially, authorities blamed the postponement on fire-safety issues and claimed the hiccup would be fixed within a few months. But deeper planning disasters gradually came to light, and the opening was pushed back multiple times in the following years.

Defects included automatic doors that lacked electricity, escalators that were too short, and a smoke-extraction system so complex, yet ineffective, it was dubbed “the Monster.”

The project’s costs have tripled to more than 6 billion euros ($7 billion), and the fiasco contributed to the departure of Klaus Wowereit as mayor of Berlin — the colorful politician who coined the description of the German capital as “poor, but sexy.”

The canceled opening wounded stores, restaurants, and hotels nearby, and hit airlines including Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Air Berlin, which went bust five years later. In the meantime, Turkey and China built two much larger airports in Istanbul and Beijing in shorter spans than BER’s delay.

Aside from forcing Berlin travelers to land at aging Cold War facilities, the long delay created other hassles. To keep air flowing and limit mold growth, empty trains had been running through a deserted station in the basement of the facility’s glass-clad terminal.

Even with the pandemic, Berlin desperately needs a modern airport that reflects the city’s status as a bustling center for technology startups and the capital of Europe’s biggest economy. It also surpassed Rome as Europe’s third-most visited city in 2014, increasing calls for a new facility.

The 1970s-era Tegel airport in the West — loved by many Berliners because of its central location and hectagon-shaped main Terminal, which allowed passengers to arrive straight at their gates — will close. Schoenefeld, the dour former communist facility adjacent to BER, will survive as its makeshift Terminal 5.

Despite being Germany’s largest city, Berlin is a secondary aviation market. Most international flights are routed through facilities in Frankfurt, Munich, and other European hubs. That’s unlikely to change, even if authorities updated BER’s plans to accommodate super-jumbo jets including the Airbus A380.

During the past months, the airport received all relevant approvals and completed a complex evacuation and fire exercise simulating a burning train. About 10,000 people armed with mock-up boarding passes ran tests for several weeks through Oct. 15, preparing personnel for everything from lost luggage to tarmac accidents and terror attacks.

The airport — located about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Brandenburg Gate — is designed to handle about 40 million passengers a year, which is close to pre-crisis levels. Its airy main hall features 118 check-in counters and dozens of shops and restaurants. The underground train station connects travelers to the city center in less than 30 minutes.

On Saturday, Lufthansa and Easyjet Plc planes will land to inaugurate the facility, with regular departures starting Nov. 1.

Besides the stylish interior and better shopping, there are real benefits from the long-awaited opening. A project is in place to integrate Tegel’s terminal into a technology center and build homes for 10,000 people on its vast airfield — easing the housing squeeze that has plagued the city in recent years.

Engelbert Luetke Daldrup, the site’s project manager since 2017, who has worked diligently to rid the airport of defects, said he remains optimistic even in the face of the pandemic.

“This airport is a signal for a new awakening,” Luetke Daldrup told reporters at the facility this week. “We’re finally able to open a modern, spacious and safe infrastructure that’s befitting a capital in the heart of Europe.”

At least 140 people have drowned after a vessel carrying around 200 migrants sank off the Senegalese coast, according to the UN migration agency.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Thursday that Senegalese and Spanish Navies and fishermen who were nearby managed to rescue 59 people and retrieve remains of 20 others.

“We call for unity between governments, partners, and the international community to dismantle trafficking and smuggling networks that take advantage of desperate youth,” Bakary Doumbia, the IOM Senegal chief of mission said.

“It is also important that we advocate for enhanced legal channels to undermine the traffickers’ business model and prevent loss of life,” he added.

The IOM, aa.com reports, said the incident followed four other shipwrecks recorded in the Central Mediterranean last week and another in the English Channel.

The agency said in September alone, 26% of the 14 boats carrying 663 migrants that left the West African country for the Canary Islands were reported to have experienced an incident or shipwreck.

It estimated that “there have been roughly 11,000 arrivals to the Canary Islands this year compared to 2,557 arrivals during the same period last year. This is still far below peaks seen in 2006 when over 32,000 people arrived.”

The West African region is a dynamic migratory pattern and has had a long history of intraregional, as well as interregional, migration flows, according to the IOM.

West Africa provides the strongest example of intraregional migration flows in sub-Saharan Africa, with 70% of migratory movements mainly linked to employment taking place within the sub-region.

At least 140 people have drowned after a vessel carrying around 200 migrants sank off the Senegalese coast, according to the UN migration agency.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Thursday that Senegalese and Spanish Navies and fishermen who were nearby managed to rescue 59 people and retrieve remains of 20 others.

“We call for unity between governments, partners, and the international community to dismantle trafficking and smuggling networks that take advantage of desperate youth,” Bakary Doumbia, the IOM Senegal chief of mission said.

“It is also important that we advocate for enhanced legal channels to undermine the traffickers’ business model and prevent loss of life,” he added.

The IOM, aa.com reports, said the incident followed four other shipwrecks recorded in the Central Mediterranean last week and another in the English Channel.

The agency said in September alone, 26% of the 14 boats carrying 663 migrants that left the West African country for the Canary Islands were reported to have experienced an incident or shipwreck.

It estimated that “there have been roughly 11,000 arrivals to the Canary Islands this year compared to 2,557 arrivals during the same period last year. This is still far below peaks seen in 2006 when over 32,000 people arrived.”

The West African region is a dynamic migratory pattern and has had a long history of intraregional, as well as interregional, migration flows, according to the IOM.

West Africa provides the strongest example of intraregional migration flows in sub-Saharan Africa, with 70% of migratory movements mainly linked to employment taking place within the sub-region.

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has hit the Aegean Sea off Greece and Turkey on Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey.

At least six buildings have been destroyed in the Turkish cities of Izmir, Bornova, and Bayrakli following the tremor, the Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Twitter.

There were no reports of loss of life yet in the Turkish cities impacted.

“Our teams continue their screening and interventions in the field,” he said.

Tens of thousands of people have participated in a fresh protest against a near-total ban on abortions in Poland.

The demonstrators, according to trtworld.com,  marched through downtown Warsaw to the house of Poland’s ruling party leader in what women’s rights activists planned as the largest demonstration in nine days of protests.

There were cases of far-right activists and soccer hooligans emerging from side streets and firing flares on people taking part in the “March on Warsaw.” Warsaw police said they detained around a dozen people.

However, much of the march proceeded peacefully and even in a festive spirit, with people dancing as vans blared music.

The protests were triggered by an October 22 ruling by Poland’s constitutional court that abortion in cases of severe fetal deformities was unconstitutional. The ruling further restricts what was already one of Europe’s more restrictive abortion laws.

Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, of the opposition Civic Platform party, joined the marchers and called for dialogue between the protesters and the government. His office later estimated the crowd at 100,000.

Families with children took part in the march early on, joining mostly young, even teenage protesters who chanted slogans calling for the government to step down and for women to have freedom of choice. 

Many carried homemade cardboard signs, many serious, others playful.

A car that drove in the procession had signs on its windows that said: “I wish I could abort my government,” and “Even Shrek wouldn’t want to live in such a swamp.”

Many also chanted obscenities against the conservative government, in what has been a distinguishing feature of these nine days of street protest.

As in previous days, protests also took place in some other Polish cities.

The march headed for the house of the right-wing ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, but police blocked the street at some distance from the house. It was not clear if Kaczynski was at home.

He is the most powerful politician in the country despite having only the government role of deputy prime minister. He has long supported a total ban on abortion and he is being blamed now for being behind the court ruling, issued by party loyalties.

“Kaczynski set fire to Poland,” said one sign held up at Warsaw’s protest.

Protesters ignored pandemic restrictions that ban public gatherings of more than five people and disregarded government calls to stay home due to skyrocketing coronavirus infections. 

The nation of 38 million has hit new records for confirmed cases almost daily this week, including the 21,600 confirmed cases reported Friday.

Mahathir Mohamad, a former Malaysian Prime Minister, who served until March 2020, took to his Twitter handle Thursday to say that “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”
The former Malaysian prime minister’s call for genocide against the French people came just hours after a knife-wielding attacker yelling “Allahu Akbar” beheaded one woman and killed two others at Notre Dame basilica in Nice.
A screenshot of the post, which has been removed from Twitter for violating its rules, has been preserved. Although the offending post has been removed, Mohmad’s Twitter account remains active, and he has not been banned from the platform despite the comments. 

Also in his Twitter rant, the 95-year-old Mohmad, a self-proclaimed anti-Semite who, in the past, has made several incendiary comments about the Jews, called French President Emmanuel Macron “primitive”, bashed Western culture, and claimed that Muslims “have a right to punish the French”.
On the heels of the beheading of Samuel Paty, a 47-year-old French history teacher, by an 18-year-old Islamic extremist from Chechnya early this month, President Macron issued a declaration of war against radical Islam. 
“What we must attack is Islamist separatism,” Macron said.At the slain teacher’s funeral, Macron said: “Samuel Paty… became the face of the Republic, of our will to shatter terrorists, to do away with Islamists, to live like a community of free citizens in our country.”
“We will not give up cartoons, drawings, even if others back down,” he added.Macron’s statements, according to rmx.news, have provoked widespread, seething anger throughout the Muslim world. Islamic leaders around the globe, in near-lockstep with one another, have condemned the French government and its people for refusing to back down from the threats of Islamic terrorists. 

Over the weekend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed that Macron requires “mental health treatment” for his viewpoints toward Islam. Macron, who is known for his pro-migration policies, has deployed harsh rhetoric towards the Islamic community in France with an eye to his reelection chances in 2022, where National Rally leader Marine Le Pen is expected to hammer Macron over his weak security policies.Erdoğan, along with several prominent Islamic political figures and organizations, has also called Muslims to boycott all French goods in response to Macron’s statements on Islam.
The former Malaysian prime minister, who’s currently making an attempt to return to power in Kuala Lumpur, is only the most recent leader from the Islamic world to join the ever-growing chorus of Muslim leaders to condemn Macron and the French people.
After criticizing freedom of speech, one of the West’s core values, Mohamad then bashed the West for allowing women to dress as they wish.”The dress code of European women at one time was severely restrictive. Apart from the face, no part of the body was exposed. But over the years, more and more parts of the body are exposed,” Mohamad said.

“Today a little string covers the most secret place, that’s all. In fact, many in the west are totally naked when on certain beaches,” he continued.”The West accepts this as normal. But the West should not try to forcibly impose this on others. To do so is to deprive the freedom of these people.””Irrespective of the religion professed, angry people kill. The French in the course of their history have killed millions of people. Many were Muslims,” Mohamad insisted. “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”
“Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French. The boycott cannot compensate the wrongs committed by the French all these years,” the ex-prime minister concluded.At present, Malaysia is home to more than 32 million people, 61 percent of whom are Muslim.

The President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government of Nigeria has vowed to fight on and make sure the country’s former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is pronounced the director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on November 9 despite her rejection by the United States.

This was disclosed by the country’s foreign ministry while reacting to Okonjo-Iweala’s last-minute rejection by Washington that threw the regulator’s leadership selection process into confusion.

The United States on Wednesday spurned Nigerian former finance minister Okonjo-Iweala hours after a high-powered WTO panel recommended her to lead the global trade watchdog, teeing her up to become its first African and first woman head.

“Nigeria will continue to engage relevant stakeholders to ensure that the lofty aspiration of her candidate to lead the World Trade Organization is realized,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday evening.

The ministry said the WTO’s 164 member states were expected to adopt Okonjo-Iweala as the watchdog’s director-general by consensus, but the United States was the sole country to oppose her, flouting the organization’s rules.

The US Trade Representative’s office later released a statement officially backing the only other remaining candidate, South Korean trade minister Yoo Myung-hee, praising her as a successful trade negotiator with the skills needed to lead the trade body at a “very difficult time”.

The next steps are uncertain, but a WTO spokesman said there was likely to be “frenzied activity” before a November 9 meeting, less than a week after the US presidential election, to secure the required consensus from all 164 member states for Okonjo-Iweala.