Salt crusts crackle underfoot as Habibullah Khatti walks to his mother’s grave to say a final goodbye before he abandons his parched island village on the Indus delta. Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in the south of the country, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities. “The saline water has surrounded us from all four sides,” Khatti told AFP from Abdullah Mirbahar village in the town of Kharo Chan, around 15 kilometres from where the river empties into the sea. As fish stocks fell, the 54-year-old turned to tailoring until that too became impossible with only four of the 150 households remaining. “In the evening, an eerie silence takes over the area,” he said, as stray dogs wandered through the deserted wooden and bamboo houses. Habibullah Khatti, a local resident, walks over the salt crusts deposited in Abdullah Mirbahar village in Kharo Chan town, in the Indus delta on June 25. — AFP Kharo Chan once comprised around 40 villages, but most h...
With 19 EU member states backing it, the Chat Control proposal could mandate pre-encryption message scanning on apps like WhatsApp and Signal by October. A controversial European Union proposal dubbed “Chat Control” is regaining momentum, with 19 out of 27 EU member states reportedly backing the measure. The plan would mandate that messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, must scan every message, photo and video sent by users starting in October, even if end-to-end encryption is in place, popular French tech blogger Korben wrote on Monday. Denmark reintroduced the proposal on July 1, the first day of its EU Council presidency. France, once opposed, is now in favor, Korben said, citing Patrick Breyer, a former member of the European Parliament for Germany and the European Pirate Party. Read more