Brussels / AFP The number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan last year was the highest recorded since 2009, the UN said on Sunday, with children paying a particularly heavy price. There were 11,002 civilian casualties in 2015 including 3,545 deaths, the UN said in its annual report on Afghan civilians in armed conflict, a four percent rise over …

AFP Some 150,000 penguins died after a massive iceberg grounded near their colony in Antarctica, forcing them to make a lengthy trek to find food, scientists say in a newly-published study. The B09B iceberg, measuring some 100 square kilometres, grounded in Commonwealth Bay in East Antarctica in December 2010, the researchers from Australia and New Zealand wrote in the Antarctic …

TAIPEI / AP Rescuers in Taiwan pulled out the remains of the final victims of last week’s earthquake and with a minute of silence ended the search with the death toll of 116, most of them in a collapsed high-rise apartment building. All but two of the dead came from the 17-story Weiguan Golden Dragon residential complex, which toppled when …