Image credit : BBC

Many people are trapped inside a Japanese shopping centre after an earthquake, the fire service says.

One witness reported the second floor of the mall in Kumamoto collapsing – BBC Verify has looked at some of the images from the site.

Reports in Japan say 20 to 30 shopping centre staff may be missing – but the figure has not been confirmed

Elsewhere in the Kumamoto prefecture, people are reported missing at a paper factory after a chimney collapsed

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit inland on Kyushu island at 16:27 local time (07:27 GMT), causing power cuts, damaged roads, a collapsed castle wall, and a destroyed footbridge.

Indian’s Gen Z protesters have forced out the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation on Saturday, after more than a week of intense street protests.

In the words of 22-year-old Sakhi, a student activist in Delhi, “for the first time, it felt like we can make things happen through protests”.Soon after Pradhan quit, social media seized on an old video of a senior Modi minister boasting that “resignations do not happen in our government”, reflecting the confidence of the nationwide youth movement that had demanded his exit.

The latest education protests erupted in May after NEET, India’s biggest medical entrance exam, was cancelled following a question paper leak, forcing nearly two million students to retake the test. More than 20 students died by suicide, with their families blaming the scandal.

The outrage was channelled by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), an online campaign launched after India’s chief justice likened unemployed people with “fake and bogus degrees” to cockroaches.

Its founders staged a sit-in in Delhi, demanding Pradhan’s resignation, education reforms and compensation for the bereaved families.

•Spain’s Military Emergencies Unit (UME) and Castilla-y-Leon unit’s firefighters battle a fire in a forest next to La Atalaya residential area in El Tiemblo, 80 kms west of Madrid, on July 25, 2026. (Photo by Cesar MANSO / AFP via Getty Images)Cesar Manso | Afp | Getty Images

Wildfires are ravaging southern France and spreading into Spain, forcing more than 300,000 people to flee ahead of further expected heatwaves during the week.

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to hold a crisis cabinet meeting on Monday, while Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will visit areas hit by fires in Valencia, in the East of Spain.

The fire, which began in the Southwest of France in Gironde on Wednesday, has burned 42,000 hectares and has forced one of the largest evacuations in France’s history, according to French broadcaster France 24 and local news outlets.

The wildfires have also affected 77,000 hectares of the Avila and Toledo areas in Western Madrid.

The situation remains highly unfavorable,” France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on X on Saturday, according to a Google translation.

“At the start of the night, in Gironde, the fire became extremely virulent and unpredictable again, generating its own wind and spreading erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area. By the end of the night, it had calmed down somewhat.”

Source: CNBC