Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

Ministers and academics from Muslim countries have attended a two-day gathering at Oxford University to discuss how to market Islamic products to the rest of the world.

The Oxford Islamic Forum opened Monday to discuss the rise in Muslim consumerism and the power of Islamic finance, Press TV's correspondent in London, Hassan Ghani, reported.

At least 14 people have been killed and three others injured in flash flooding in southern districts of Saudi Arabia, Saudi officials have announced.

The incident claimed the lives of Saudi people in several mountainous areas of Asir, Jazan, Najran and Taif, the country's civil defense members said on Saturday.

Heavy rains have caused a 300-foot-long breach in Lake Delhi Dam, threatening towns downstream and making hundreds of people flee for safety in eastern Iowa.

David Fink, Lake Delhi dam operation manager, called the breach “a catastrophic release of water.”

Chinese officials have warned of more rain to come for some southern provinces already hit hard by floods that have so far left at least 1,100 people dead or missing.

The National Meteorological Centre warned on Sunday that parts of the southwestern province of Sichuan - where 100,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in recent days - would  continue to see torrential downpours.

China's most severe floods in a decade are threatening to get worse as the landmark Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river is close to overflowing, with its reservoir almost full.

The water level reached 158 metres on Saturday morning, just 17 metres from the reservoir's maximum capacity, flood control headquarters in the central province of Hubei told The Associated Press.

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake has struck the Philippines' Moro Gulf.

The epicenter of the quake, which occurred at 6:08 a.m. local time on Saturday (2208 GMT Friday), was 106 kilometers (66 miles) off the coastal city of Cotabato, Mindanao, and 923 kilometers (573 miles) southeast of Manila.

A blue-green algae mass at about the size of Germany now covers huge parts of the Baltic Sea, putting the marine habitat at risk, a satellite view of the sea shows.

The huge carpet of foul-smelling algae has grown rapidly due to record summer heat, the dumping of farm fertilizers and calm sea, threatening tourism and the marine habitat in the process.

Heavy rains caused a river to burst its banks in Turkey, flooding a village and killing six people, including two children from the same family.

The river water flooded the village of Saclik, near the town of Horasan, in Erzurim province, and swept away seven members of the family. Six of them were found dead, but a young boy was rescued, the Associated Press quoted Turkey's Anatolia news agency as saying.

Around 520 people have died in Belgium since April in a heat wave which has claimed scores of lives in southern and eastern Europe.

Between April 1 and July 4, a total of 520 people died across the country, said Bianca Cox, a scientific collaborator at the Scientific Institute of Public Health in Belgium, which provides research on public health issues.

Papua New Guinea has been hit by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, though no destructive tsunami is expected and no immediate damage report was released.

The quake hit at 19:18 GMT on Tuesday, 130 kilometers northeast of Kandrian on New Britain Island at a depth of 36 kilometers, the US Geological Survey said, revising the location and an earlier estimate of 6.6 magnitudes.