Ukraine braces for cold winter amid uncertainty over power supplies

Fears grow Russia will target country’s gas infrastructure or further cut its supplies to Europe

Ukrainians are likely to experience the coldest winter in decades, its gas chief has said, as the thermostats on its Soviet-era centralised heating systems are set to be switched on later and turned down.

Yurii Vitrenko, the head of the state gas company Naftogaz, said indoor temperatures would be set at between 17 and 18C, about four degrees lower than normal, and he advised people to stock up on blankets and warm clothes for when outdoor temperatures fall to and beyond the -10C winter average.

Continue reading...

Latest death by Indigenous tribe highlights rising tensions in Peru

Gean del Aguila’s body was recovered after he disappeared last Sunday when he encountered the Mashco-Piro tribe while fishing

The death of a logger who was shot with arrows has cast a spotlight on the growing conflict around an Indigenous reserve occupied by an Indigenous tribe that has long lived in voluntary isolation on Peru’s south-eastern Amazon border with Brazil.

The body of Gean del Aguila, 21, was recovered on Thursday after a four-day hunt by a search party of police, Indigenous guides and company workers.

Continue reading...

Pakistan declares floods a ‘climate catastrophe’ as death toll tops 1,000

Flash flooding from ‘monster monsoon’ washes away villages and crops and leaves thousands homeless

A Pakistani minister has called the country’s deadly monsoon season “a serious climate catastrophe” and “a climate dystopia at our doorstep” as officials said deaths from widespread flooding in Pakistan had passed 1,000 since mid-June.

Flash floods, which have intensified in recent days, have swept away villages, roads, bridges, people, livestock and crops across all four provinces. Pakistan has appealed for international help as soldiers and rescue workers have evacuated stranded people to relief camps and provided food to thousands of displaced people.

Continue reading...

‘We are Chinese’: meet the Taiwanese who want to embrace Beijing rule

Surveys reveal that up to 12% of the country supports unification with China, including five of its citizens in a Taipei restaurant

At a Cantonese restaurant in Taipei, Harry Chen and four old friends are shouting at each other over a Lazy Susan, stopping occasionally to toast each other with Canadian whisky or translate their argument into English.

All are retired men in their 70s – the sons of Chinese nationalist soldiers – and were born or grew up in Taiwan during its brutal decades of martial law.

Continue reading...

Artemis 1: crowds flock to watch Nasa’s most powerful rocket blast off to the moon

Megarocket to lift off from Florida on Monday morning, one of final crucial test steps before astronauts’ return to the moon

The most powerful space rocket ever to leave Earth will take a 50-year leap across the heavens when it rises from its Florida launchpad on Monday, one of the final crucial test steps before humanity’s return to the moon for the first time since 1972.

Artemis 1, comprising Orion, a six-person deep-space exploration capsule, atop a 98m (322ft), 2,600-tonne (2,875-ton) Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, is scheduled for its maiden liftoff at 8.33am ET (1.33pm UK time) from the same Cape Canaveral launch complex that staged the Apollo lunar missions half a century ago.

Continue reading...

Israel grapples with ‘systemic problem’ of fatal road crashes

Traffic deaths dropped by only 4.7% in last decade, compared with a 31% fall worldwide

When Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant group in the Gaza Strip, fired about 1,000 rockets at Israel during an unexpected flare-up of violence earlier this month, most were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system, and no Israelis were seriously hurt or killed.

On the country’s roads, however, it was a different story. In the same week, 19 people were killed in traffic incidents during a wave of particularly serious crashes.

Continue reading...

Death toll rises after lorry rolls into street party in Netherlands

Many others injured as police say they are trying to determine why vehicle careered down dyke

The death toll from an accident when a lorry drove off a dyke and into a barbecue party in a village south of Rotterdam has risen to six, with a further seven people in hospital, including one in critical condition.

Police said the lorry driver, a 46-year-old Spanish man, was suspected of causing the crash, which happened early on Saturday evening in the village of Nieuw-Beijerland.

Continue reading...

Toxins in soil, blasted forests – Ukraine counts cost of Putin’s ‘ecocide’

Environmentalists are measuring the impact of Russian military’s devastation and hope to force Moscow into making reparations

The woods outside Chernihiv were quiet in late August when Anatoliy Pavelko scrambled into a 10-metre bomb crater with a trowel and an icebox full of sample jars. He wanted to find out what the Russian FAB-250 bomb left behind when it carved this gaping hole into the ground in the spring.

Four months earlier, the environmental lawyer was dug in on a frontline just a few kilometres away, shells crashing around him in the bitter fight to keep Russian forces out of Kyiv.

Continue reading...

Pakistan floods death toll passes 1,000, say officials

More than 33 million people have been displaced as destructive monsoon rains continue to wreak havoc

Flash floods triggered by destructive monsoon rains across much of Pakistan have killed more than 1,000 people and injured and displaced thousands more since June, officials have said.

The new death toll came a day after the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, asked for international help in battling deadly flood damage. More than 33 million people have been displaced.

Continue reading...

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach lawsuit ends in 11th hour settlement

Dramatic move shows Mark Zuckerberg ‘desperate to avoid being questioned over cover-up’, says Observer journalist who exposed scandal

Facebook has dramatically agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users, four years after the Observer exposed the scandal that mired the tech giant in repeated controversy.

A court filing reveals that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has in principle settled for an undisclosed sum a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the UK analysis firm.

Continue reading...

‘Time has run out’: UN fails to reach agreement to protect marine life

This fifth round of discussions was meant to establish a UN Ocean Treaty that would protect biodiversity in international waters

The latest round of talks at the United Nations aimed at securing protections for marine life in international waters that cover half the planet ended without agreement Saturday.

The fifth round of discussions, which began two weeks ago, were designed to establish a UN Ocean Treaty that would set rules for protecting biodiversity in two-thirds of the world’s oceanic areas that lie outside territorial waters.

Continue reading...

US to name Arctic ambassador as thawing pole heats superpower rivalry

US says ambassador-at-large will engage with other Arctic nations, Indigenous groups and other stakeholders

The US has said it will create a position of Arctic ambassador to step up diplomacy as Russia and China increase their presence in waters opened up by climate breakdown.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will soon name an ambassador-at-large who will engage with other Arctic nations, Indigenous groups and other stakeholders, state department spokesperson Vedant Patel said.

Continue reading...

Russia-Ukraine war: risk of radioactive leak at ‘repeatedly shelled’ Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, operator warns – as it happened

Ukraine’s state energy operator: ‘There are risks of hydrogen leakage and sputtering of radioactive substances’

A US citizen has recently died in Ukraine, according to a state department spokesperson.

Officials are in touch with the family and are providing consular assistance, they added.

We also once again reiterate US citizens should not travel to Ukraine due to the active armed conflict and the singling out of US citizens in Ukraine by Russian government security officials, and that US citizens in Ukraine should depart immediately if it is safe to do so using any commercial or other privately available ground transportation options.

On August 26, Russians killed two civilians in Donetsk region – in Bakhmut. Twelve people were injured.

Continue reading...

Of all the legal threats Trump is facing, is this the one that could take him down?

The quiet workings of a Georgia grand jury hearing evidence of election fraud could represent the ex-president’s greatest danger

Donald Trump’s lawyers are earning their keep.

The former president’s attorneys have raced to put out one fire after another in recent months as they defend Trump from investigations into the squirrelling away of secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, his part in the storming of the Capitol during his last days in office, and twin probes into his business dealings in New York.

Continue reading...

‘The blue flags are proof’: how Greece cleaned up its act on sewage

Greeks take their seas seriously, with the construction of one of the world’s biggest sewage treatment plants a real game-changer

The shimmering waters along the Athenian riviera offer a welcome respite in the summer heat. In one of Europe’s most congested cities the sight of ever more beaches attaining blue flag status – a mascot of water quality – has heightened the sense of relief that the coastal location affords. For those who flock to its coves, rocks and sandy stretches, the shoreline that extends from the Greek capital’s southern suburbs has become the perfect antidote to the rising temperatures that have accompanied climate breakdown.

It was not always so.

Tell us what you think about the Guardian’s climate reporting – it takes just two minutes

Continue reading...

Naomi Judd dealing with bipolar disorder when she died by suicide, autopsy says

Medical examiner’s report confirms country star shot and killed herself in April and had been managing post-traumatic stress

Grammy-winning country musician Naomi Judd was struggling with bipolar disorder when she shot herself and died at her home in Tennessee earlier this year, according to a report released Friday by the local medical examiner, and a statement from her family added that she was dealing with post-traumatic stress, too.

Judd and her family had previously discussed in largely general terms her long battle with depression prior to her death by suicide at the end of April. But the report Friday from the Nashville medical examiner’s office, along with the statement from Judd’s relatives, offered the most complete description yet of the mental illnesses surrounding her depression.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org

Continue reading...

Ethiopia: airstrike hits playground in Tigray, killing at least seven

Medical officials say three children among those killed as fighting resumes in northern Ethiopia days after a truce collapsed

An airstrike on a children’s playground has killed at least seven people in the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, medical officials there said, in the first such attack after a four-month-old ceasefire collapsed this week.

The officials said three children were among the dead but a federal government spokesperson denied any civilian casualties.

Continue reading...

Dow plunges 1,000 points after Fed chief Powell warns of inflation ‘pain’

US stock markets nosedive as Jerome Powell says at top bank summit the ‘overarching focus is to bring inflation back down’

US stock markets nosedived on Friday after Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned of “pain” ahead as the central bank struggles to bring down inflation from a 40-year high.

Powell’s highly anticipated speech was more hawkish than had been expected, with the Fed chair pledging to do all he could to end rising prices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost just over 1,000 points, 3%, the S&P fell 3.3% and the Nasdaq dropped almost 4%.

Continue reading...