World Report (14-21 August) Latest news in the world

• “Afghanistan is a defeat for the Western world”

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell evaluated the latest situation in Afghanistan and the European Union's stance on the issue. “There has already been an Afghan migration for the last three months. Here, Turkey will play a very important role. There will be many people who will try to pass through Turkey” he said.

Pointing out that the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan is the West's failure, Borrell also said: "What happened in Afghanistan is a defeat for the Western world. We must have the courage to see and recognize this with all its clarity."

• Haiti earthquake: Tensions rise in struggle to get aid to victims

Five days after a powerful earthquake killed at least 2,189 people in Haiti help is trickling in, but struggling people say they need it more quickly. The poorest country in the Americas is in urgent need of medical, food and sanitation assistance, experts say.

Since the 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the island on Saturday, the US military has transported at least 200 severely injured people to hospital. Around 53,000 homes were completely destroyed in the quake, with about 77,000 more damaged.

• Global sizzling: July was hottest month on record

Earth sizzled in July and became the hottest month in 142 years of recordkeeping, U.S. weather officials announced. As extreme heat waves struck parts of the United States and Europe, the globe averaged 16.73 degrees Celsius last month, beating out the previous record set in July 2016 and tied again in 2019 and 2020.

“In this case first place is the worst place to be. This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe” the experts said.

• Three-child policy formally passed into law in China

China has formally revised its laws to allow couples to have up to three children, to boost the birth rate. The country had announced back in May that it would allow couples to have up to three children, in a major policy shift.

That decision has now been formally passed into law, along with several resolutions aimed at boosting the birth rate and "reducing the burden" of raising a child. In 2016, the country had scrapped its decades-old one-child policy to replace it with a two-child limit, but this failed to lead to a sustained upsurge in births.

• The lambda variant in Japan was related to the Olympics

The central government will soon start releasing information about cases of the Lambda variant of the novel coronavirus that have been identified in Japan. The first case of the Lambda variant in Japan was confirmed on July 20 at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. A woman arriving from Peru for the Tokyo Olympics tested positive on arrival.

The Lambda variant caused a relative majority of infections in Peru, Chile and Ecuador. “There are not many travelers from these three countries. Under current circumstances, the risk of spreading the Lambda variant in Japan is very low” the experts said.