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A 16-year-old migrant who had illegally entered Greece with his family died of a heroin overdose, Sto Nisi reported.

He was found dead on Friday by his parents in the tent where they all lived together in the Moria migrant camp on the island of Lesvos.

The body of the Afghan teenager was transported for a forensic examination at Mytilene Hospital.

Afghanistan is the heroin capital of the world, where it is not only the leading producer of the poppy plant needed to make the addictive drug, but 12.6% of the adult population in Afghanistan in 2015 were addicted to heroin.

The death of the child comes as during a formal inspection of the infamous Moria migrant camp, one of the illegal immigrants staying at the camp was arrested by police as he was found with a knife and selling heroin, as reported by Greek City Times yesterday.

During the search that took place at the Moria migrant camp, he was found to be in possession of a three-gram package of heroin, an electronic scale and a nine centimetre knife. They were immediately confiscated.

A case was filed against the illegal immigrant for drug possession and trafficking, and violation of the law on weapons and was referred to the Mytilene Prosecutors Office.

There have been many other shocking events that have occurred in Lesvos this year, including two gangs of Afghani immigrantsbattling each other,African immigrants ridiculing andcoughing on policein the midst of the coronavirus pandemic,and thousands ofolives trees being destroyed.

However, the death of a teenager to heroin, a drug that virtually did not exist on Lesvos before the migrant crisis began in 2015, shows just how rampant the addictive substance has become on the island, and calls to question how many addicts are living in the migrant camp.

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16-year-old Dies From Heroin Overdose In Greek Migrant Camp - Greek City Times

After over three months of hiatus, the government has finally resumed issuance of labour permits to the migrant workers who could not go on foreign employment in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security, on Thursday, decided to issue labour permits to the migrant workers who in the wake of the pandemic had been stuck in the country during their job break and those workers who had renewed their work contracts and visas.

According to Bhola Nath Guragain, the spokesperson with the Department of Foreign Employment, labour permits will be issued to only those migrant workers who wish to go back to their jobs.

Distribution of re-entry labour permits have started from the Foreign Employment Office in Tahachal, Kathmandu, and other Labour and Employment Offices in all Provinces from today, Guragain told the Post.

These workers will have to undergo Covid-19 screening and follow the standard health protocol to obtain their labour permits.

The government has still not made any decision on issuing labour permits to the first-time applicants of overseas employment.

In mid-March, when coronavirus cases started multiplying in labour destination countries, the government had stopped labour migration for an indefinite period. The department on March 13 stopped giving labour permits, a move that has affected thousands of aspirant migrant workers.

After the government relaxed the lockdown, the Covid-19 Crisis Management Centre (CCMC) last week decided that Nepali citizens, including the migrant workers who are at home during job break would be allowed to go on foreign employment as per the recommendation of the Ministry of Labour.

However, the CCMC decision to resume labour migration has drawn criticism from several labour migration experts. According to them, allowing Nepali workers to migrate on foreign employment will only put them at risk because most of the labour hosting countries are still reeling under the pandemic.

According to Swarna Kumar Jha, a labour migration researcher, the government decision to allow Nepali migrant workers to go on foreign employment lacks both timeliness and logic.

The government decision to resume labour migration clearly shows that they are not serious about its own decision. On the one hand, we are bringing back workers from several labour destination countries. And on the other, we are hurrying to send the workers to those same countries, said Jha.

The time is not right to start sending workers. Even if the government wanted to send workers, it could have begun with countries like South Korea and Japan where the pandemic is largely under control and the number of Nepali workers working and living is relatively smaller, added Jha, who is also a coordinator with the National Network for Safe Migration.

The government is currently busy bringing home Nepali workers from various labour destination countries after they lost their jobs in the wake of the pandemic.

We had been receiving calls from migrant workers asking us to resume labour migration. Workers on leave and those with good-paying jobs wanted to go back to their jobs, said Guragain. Following their demands, we took the proposal to the Labour Ministry, which made the decision to issue re-entry labour permits.

Jha, however, said that the governments decision to send workers abroad is merely an attempt at diverting the attention of returnee migrant workers and unemployed youths away from its failure to create jobs at home.

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Government starts issuing labour permits to migrant workers on job break and with renewed contracts - The Kathmandu Post

For almost 13 years, Mumbai has been a second home to 48-year-old Pramod Yadav and his younger brother who came from their native village in Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, to work at construction sites and earn a living in the country's financial capital.

However, due to the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, tens of thousands of migrant workers, like Pramod, were forced to undertake a long and painstaking journey from Mumbai and other metropolitan cities in order to return to their native places.

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Daily labourers like us are hit the hardest by the outbreak, driving us deeper into hunger and poverty, shared Pramod in an agonised voice as he waited in the queue for his turn to receive food and facemasks distributed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

Also Read:Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases

Besides labourers like Pramod, some were young children and women, carrying with them the life they had built for themselves packed into their small bags.It will take us around three days to reach Gonda and a few more days in a quarantine camp until we finally meet our family, said Pramod.As the Covid-19 outbreak battered Mumbai and other parts of the country, many vulnerable sections including daily wage-earners and migrants lost their livelihoods, leaving them with no other option but to return to their hometowns.

COVID-19 Pandemic Tracker: 15 countries with the highest number of coronavirus cases, deaths

Indian Railways and Maharashtra Government arranged special Shramik Express trains which continue to ferry distressed migrants back to their native villages.Hundreds of such special trains were arranged daily from Mumbai and suburban areas, Pune, Nagpur and Nasik. Besides taking these special trains, many helpless migrants also travelled hitching rides on buses, vans, cycles or on foot; often hundreds of miles away braving heat, hunger and the scourge of the virus.

In such testing times, Dawoodi Bohra volunteers joined hands with the BMC to make the long journey of migrants a tad less arduous by serving them food, fruits and water at railway and bus stations.

This effort to serve migrants was undertaken by the Dawoodi Bohra communitys global philanthropic initiative - Project Rise. While fresh meals were cooked at the communitys Faizul Mawaid al Burhaniyah kitchens in Mumbai and Nagpur, the distribution of food packets at the respective stations was taken up by the communitys volunteer corps, Burhani Guards.

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We know the situation is really bad for these workers who are both monetarily and emotionally in a very difficult position. This is the least we can do for them to ensure they have something to eat on their way back home, said Yusuf Hakimuddin, spokesperson of Project Rise which has been providing food, water and other essentials during the lockdown period in coordination with the BMC and other local authorities.

Acknowledging the Bohra communitys kind gesture, Assistant Municipal Commissioner of BMC, in a letter to Shahzada Husain Bhaisaheb Burhanuddin stated, Your father His Holiness Dr Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin has always guided your members to serve fellow citizens and this charitable service of your community people in the hour of crisis is highly commendable and appreciated.

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Dawoodi Bohras join other volunteers to serve migrants food, water during their arduous journey back home - Deccan Herald

Under fierce attacks from the opposition over his decision not to release the Department of Treasury's review into the government's $70 billion wage subsidy scheme, JobKeeper, Mr Morrison said he was "carefully weighing up" the important issues.

Labor has seized on modelling showing about 4800 businesses and an estimated 18,000 workers in the electorate, which takes in Queanbeyan and includes the towns of Yass, Bega and Cooma, were reliant on the subsidy.

Ms McBain and Labor's treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers have called on the government to release the review and reveal whether the $1500-a-fortnight payment would be made available beyond its September cut-out date.

"I've already flagged very clearly there will be a next phase and we are calibrating that next phase and targeting it to ensure that the support is there for those businesses and those employees who will continue to need it," Mr Morrison said.

"But for many other businesses, we're pleased to see that there has been some improvement and so these are decisions that you don't rush to meet Labor's timetable."

Dr Kotvojs, appearing alongside Mr Morrison at Lobs Hole in Kosciuszko National Park, was forced to defend a submission she made to the royal commission into the summer's bushfires.

Labor seized on the words, written by the candidate and her husband Alan Burdon in April, which called for fuel loads to be better managed and did not reference climate change.

"For us, there is only one issue fuel load. Unless this is addressed, everything else is meaningless," they wrote.

Dr Kotvojs said she believed the climate was changing and that humans were contributing to that change.

"Where I live, the fires came through our farm and we watched them coming at Cobargo, into Dignams Creek, and the areas where there been hazard reduction already occur, the fire came through low intensity and much slower," she said.

"It caused much less damage. The area where the hazard reduction hadn't occurred, the fire was just so intense. It's caused so much damage."

Labor candidate Kristy McBain is aiming to retain the seat Mike Kelly won in 2019 before leaving politics.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Ms McBain, who stood aside as Bega Valley mayor to contest the by-election, said on Tuesday that holding onto the seat vacated by two-time MP Mike Kelly was going to be "difficult".

ALP sources told The Herald that preferences from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party would be critical for the party's chances to retaining the seat. Mr Kelly won by about 1 per cent last May.

They said it remained uncertain whether Nationals voters would give their second preference to the Liberals and there was an grassroots campaign among some party members to send a protest vote elsewhere.

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Ms McBain said the community was "really hurting" after drought, bushfire and the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shut down the tourism sector.

"I've spoken to so many business owners, so many residents. Everybody is really concerned about the future of their work, the future of their jobs," she said.

"They actually want someone that's going to go into bat for them long term. Not someone that just shows up during a by-election, but someone who's already got their runs on the board."

Rob Harris is the National Affairs Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based at Parliament House in Canberra

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Liberals confident they are in 'striking distance' of Eden-Monaro upset - Sydney Morning Herald

B.C. Liberal MLAs are using taxpayers' moneyto payfor ads in a Christian magazine that includes articles opposed to transgender rights and medically assisted dying.

The party caucus has billed more than $2,000, listed under various MLA accounts, for ads in The Light Magazine in the 18 months leading up to the end of 2019.

The story was originally reported on Monday in PressProgress, an online non-profitnews publication that bills itself as "progressive" and was founded in 2013 by the Broadbent Institute, according to its website.

Receipts showing how members of the B.C. legislaturespendtheirconstituency office allowancearepublicly available online.MLAs are allowed to bill for communications such as newsletters, flyers or advertisements.Expenses for 2020 are not yet available.

The Light Magazine is described on its website as a free Christian lifestyle magazine that discusses topics such ashealth, marriage, family, finances, faith and culture. The magazine, which is basedin Langley, B.C., says its mission is to connect Christians and encourage participation in local church life.

Past issues have promoted controversial views on topics ranging from transgender rights to medically assisted dying and conversion therapy.

An article in the magazine from 2018 details the rise of a conservative Christian movement that resulted in a document called the the West Coast Christian Accord. That accord, reprinted in The Light, condemns unconventional marriages and those who "adopt a homosexual or transgender self-perception."

In the most recent edition the magazine published an editorial about the struggle of Christianity in COVID-19 times, urging Christians to beware pundits who heighten fear and anxiety to "sell commercials."

Constituency expense receipts show various MLAs billing for ads placed with Light Christian Media Inc.

In December, long-time Langley MLA Rich Coleman alonebilled $1,428 for a Christmas ad paid to Light Christian Media Inc. bythe B.C. Liberal Caucus.

A sum of $503 was paid for an ad in the magazine's October 2019 edition, showing B.C. Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson and nine other MLAs in a Thanksgiving greeting.

That ad appears adjacent to an article on sexual temptationthat warns of the dangers ofpornography, sexual anarchy and orgies.

A few pages after the ad, there is a feature that criticizes a ban on conversion therapy as an assault on freedom of speech.

Conversion therapy is a practice that aims to change an individual's sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, which means identifying with the sex assigned to them at birth. It uses different ways in some cases,electric shocks to create aversion to certain stimuli.

In the November edition, a writer in The Light discusses the Delta Hospice Society's move to become a Christian organizationand describes the practice of medically assisted dying as "barbaric."

A promotional ad for MLA Marvin Huntis a few pages away one of many similar ads Hunt has taken out in The Light, costing just under $150 per issue.

B.C. Liberal MLA Simon Gibson also wrote a monthly column for the publication, offering spiritual advice.

His April 2019 column appearedbeside an editorial by Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson, a former televangelist andfailedPeople's Party of Canada candidate, that criticizedSOGI 123, the sexual orientation and gender identity curriculum taught in B.C. schools.

CBC has reached out to B.C. LiberalMLAs for comment.

At 9:15 a.m. PT Tuesday, Wilkinson tweetedthat there is "no room in the B.C. Liberal Party for homophobia, transphobia or any other form of discrimination."

"Going forward, we are taking immediate steps to ensure our advertising decisions reflect those values at all times," he added.

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B.C. Liberals ran ads in Christian magazine that features content opposed to trans rights, assisted death - CBC.ca