The blackened shell of Grenfell Tower could soon become a sky-high canvas for the drawings of children, as officials begin to consider the building's future. It is expected work to put a protective wrap around the site of Britain's most costly tragedy in a generation will begin from this month ahead of its eventual demolition. Officials are said to be considering covering the entire 24-storey structure with a screen, on to which paintings by children from nearby will be projected nightly. Michael Lockwood, manager of the site, said the idea came from a recent meeting he had with pupils. "Many of them said it was upsetting looking up at the tower when they have lost friends in the fire," Lockwood said.
A man who repeatedly stabbed a Brisbane mother and knifed her teenage son when he tried to stop the attack is dead after slamming his car into a parked truck. The man, believed to have once been in a relationship with the woman, went to her Forest Lake home today and repeatedly stabbed her in the upper body. The woman's 18-year-old son suffered multiple wounds to his arms and hands when he tried to stop the attack. Police say two other children, both aged under 10, were home at the time. The 46-year-old man then fled the home. His body was found in the wreckage of a car that slammed into a parked truck at nearby Wacol. The woman and her son are in hospital with serious injuries.
The head of the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah said it was time for political leaders to accept the survival of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Government. Hizbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah, addressing a rally held in Lebanon's southern Marjayoun district, advised the Lebanese Government to normalise ties with its war-torn neighbour. Lebanon's political parties are split over whether to restore relations with the pariah Syrian leader.
A massive landslide caused by a cloudburst swept two buses off the road into a gorge in India's northern Himachal Pradesh state, killing more than 40 people, an official says. Rescuers recovered 47 dead bodies before search operations were called off. No other passengers were known to be missing, Krishan Kumar, a public relations officer at the National Disaster Response Force, told Reuters.
Hundreds of people have gathered in an ancient forest in Poland to protest against the widespread logging the government has ordered there. The Bialowieza Forest, one of Europe's last primeval woodlands and a Unesco World Heritage site, is the subject of a heated political dispute over the logging ordered by Poland's conservative ruling Law and Justice party. Environmentalists and the European Union oppose the logging, while the Government argues it is necessary to fight a bark beetle infestation. The Government has defied a July order by the EU's Court of Justice to immediately stop the cutting.
