Thousands more people have fled their homes after wildfires surged near a small lake town in northern California as crews, stretched to their limits across the state, fight flames that have claimed the lives of both firefighters and civilians.

Residents of the waterfront town of Lakeport fled on Sunday after a major flare-up of two fires that combined across Mendocino and Lake counties destroyed at least four homes. Lakeport, home to about 5,000, is around 120 miles (192km) north of San Francisco. More than 4,500 buildings were under threat, officials said. The two fires had blackened 47 sq miles (122 sq km), with minimal containment. About 100 miles north-east, officials near Redding struck a hopeful tone for the first time in days as a massive fire slowed after days of explosive growth.(theguardian)…[+]

About 4 million people who live in the Indian border state of Assam have been excluded from a draft list of citizens, as Bengali-speaking Muslims fear they will be sent to detention centres or deported.

The state government has put stringent security in place while the chief minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, has told Indian media that those finding themselves stateless overnight should not worry. Sonowal said they would be given a chance to prove their claim of citizenship, that none of the 4 million would be sent to a detention camp, and that “no one will be treated as a foreigner”. Sonowal told the Hindustan Times that “ample opportunity will be given to applicants to prove their eligibility”.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled to India during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in the early 1970s. Most of them settled in Assam, which has a near-165-mile (270km) border with Bangladesh.(theguardian)…[+]

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is preparing to conduct an evaluation of the work it did in up to 11 of its Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) between 2005 and 2017. The countries make up the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and Overseas Dependent Territories (ODTs).

The Country Strategy and Programme Evaluation (CSPE) is scheduled for completion by mid-2019, and is a tool used by multilateral development banks to assess and interpret past performance, and provide forward-looking conclusions and recommendations. Through country strategies, often presented in Country Strategy Papers, CDB identifies where and how it can provide support in a results-oriented manner to achieve a country’s development objectives and poverty reduction goals. Strategies are developed in consultation with governments, development partners and other stakeholders.

“The Country Strategy and Programme Evaluation will assess performance with respect to the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the portfolio of loans and technical assistance provided to the countries that make up the OECS and the ODTs,” said James Melanson, Head of the Office of Independent Evaluation, CDB. The questions for which the CSPE is expected to provide answers include whether CDB’s strategies and operational programmes were relevant to the development challenges facing the BMC; whether the Bank’s assistance took particular account of the vulnerability of the OECS and ODTs, and the extent to which its assistance contributed to reducing vulnerability.

The lessons and recommendations from the Evaluation will be used to improve the Bank’s country strategies and programme performance in the targeted countries—Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Turks and Caicos Islands…[+]