More than 500 homes have been destroyed by fires raging across Australia and thousands of people face the possibility of Christmas in shelters.

One of the largest fires in the nation’s history ripped through communities west of Sydney. Several villages in the Blue Mountains were partly destroyed despite the efforts of 3,000 firefighters to contain blazes that have now burnt a total area far in excess of that destroyed in the Amazon this year.

Carnival Cruise Lines said one person suffered a minor injury on the Carnival Glory when a group of guests was evacuated from the dining room. Additional footage shows the Glory then almost struck another cruise ship called Oasis of the Seas, which was moored in front of the legend.

The pro-business Macron is aware that the strikes over his planned pensions changes have increasingly focused on him personally, with caricatures and banners at street demonstrations depicting him as king.

Just as the gilets jaunes anti-government protesters earlier this year complained about Macron building a swimming pool at a presidential summer retreat, and expensively upgrading Élysée carpets and crockery, banners at pensions protests mocked him and and other former presidents for their luxury lifestyles and generous settlements once they leave office.

Among election maxims, “Every Vote Counts” reigns supreme. But there is perhaps nowhere it rings truer than in elections like Valdosta’s. In municipalities across Georgia’s 159 counties, local elections are determined by margins as small as hundreds of votes — if not dozens.

Yes, every vote counts. But, as Valdosta illustrates, sometimes not every vote is counted. Often times for African Americans in rural southern Georgia, the whole franchise can appear out of grasp.

The Walled Off Hotel sells itself boasting ‘The worst view in the world’, and sits in front of the eight-metre high concrete wall built by Israel to encage Bethlehem. Each of the rooms in the hotel, which opened in 2017, overlooks a section of the vast concrete wall.