Environment

More than 58,000 children are at risk of dying from starvation in Somalia if they are not provided with urgent humanitarian assistance the United Nations has warned. The international community has failed to tackle the famine crisis due to the internal conflicts and an ongoing war in the African country. Press TV reports: UN aid chief for Somalia Peter de Clercq said on Monday that more than 300,000 children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. The UN official also said that they urgently need medical, food, and other humanitarian support.

North Korea have issued a defiant warning to the west, saying they intend to continue launching more long-range rockets in the future, despite international warnings to stop.  Pyongyang say the most recent rocket launch on Sunday was so that North Korea could send a satellite into space, strongly denying claims by the West that the launch was used as a means of testing ballistic missiles.

Russia have launched the Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket containing the navigation satellite Glonass-M into space from the Plesetsk space center on Sunday.  “On Sunday, at 03.21 a.m. Moscow time [24:21 GMT] a squad of Russian Space Forces of Russian Aerospace Forces successfully carried out a launch of a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the navigation satellite Glonass-M,” the press service told Russian media outlets. Tass.ru reports: “It will take several hours for the Frigate upper stage to bring the Glonass-M spacecraft to the intended orbit,” the Defense Ministry added.

The rogue state of North Korea has apparently given itself the right to conduct economic and industrial activity on the Norwegian territory of Svalbard after signing an ancient treaty. The country signed the Svalbard Treaty on 25 January according to The Korean Central News Agency. The Sunday Express reports:. The agency said in a news bulletin: “The accession of the Treaty gives the country the right to practice economic activities and research on Svalbard Islands.” It is unknown what the rogue state’s agenda on Svalbard is.

In a groundwater leak at the Indian Point nuclear power plant, three monitoring wells were discovered to contain “alarming levels of radioactivity” The Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has ordered an immediate environmental probe into the issue. Health and environment commissioners were ordered to begin an investigation into the leak of “radioactive tritium-contaminated water” at the Indian Point nuclear power plant after the operator, Entergy Nuclear Operations, raised the alarm. In a statement, Cuomo  said one of the wells reported a 65,000% spike in radioactivity.