White House confirms US policy has not changed after president’s remarks on 60 Minutes show
Joe Biden has again said US forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, in his most explicit statement so far on the issue.
Asked in a CBS 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday whether US forces would defend the self-ruled island claimed by China, he replied: “Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”
Continue reading...Official Wu Zunyou also called for people to avoid ‘skin-to-skin contact’ with those who had been abroad recently, as well as ‘strangers’
A senior Chinese health official has advised people to avoid physical contact with foreigners to prevent possible monkeypox infection after the first known case of the virus on mainland China was reported on Friday.
“To prevent possible monkeypox infection and as part of our healthy lifestyle, it is recommended that 1) you do not have direct skin-to-skin contact with foreigners,” Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted on his official Weibo page on Saturday.
Continue reading...Russian-backed mayor says Ukrainian shelling killed 13 in Donetsk; Ukraine reports Russian strike on nuclear plant
Thirteen people were killed by artillery shelling on Monday in the east Ukrainian separatist-held city of Donetsk, the city’s Russian-backed mayor said.
Russian forces struck the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region early on Monday, but its reactors have not been damaged and are working normally, Ukraine’s state nuclear company, Energoatom, said.
The Kremlin has said that beefing up ties with Beijing is a top policy goal, a Russian security official said on Monday during a visit to China.
Germany’s Die Linke could split into two parties over the Ukraine war, as the ailing leftwing outfit’s indecisive stance on economic sanctions against Russia triggered a series of high-profile resignations this week.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, will visit Saudi Arabia and meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, as part of a Gulf trip, his spokesperson said on Monday, as Germany rushes to secure energy supplies.
The German central bank said on Monday it was increasingly likely that Europe’s largest economy would shrink for a “prolonged” period as Russia throttled energy supplies to the continent.
The Kremlin has rejected allegations that Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine’s Kharkiv province as a “lie”.
Russia is urging Uefa to ban the manager of the Ukraine men’s national team after he expressed a wish to fight Vladimir Putin’s invading forces, the Guardian has revealed.
The US president, Joe Biden, has warned Vladimir Putin that the use of nuclear or other nonconventional weapons against Ukraine would prompt a “consequential” response from the US.
Russia is highly likely to have lost at least four combat jets in Ukraine within the last 10 days, taking its attrition to about 55 since the beginning of its invasion, the British military said on Monday.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has added it to the small group of countries excluded from Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in London today, which includes Belarus, Myanmar, Syria, Venezuela and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
The Institute for the Study of War thinktank said Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, was “increasingly relying on irregular volunteer and proxy forces rather than conventional units” in its latest update on the Russian campaign.
The Ukrainian military said on Sunday that its forces repelled attacks by Russian troops in the Kharkiv region in the east and Kherson region in the south, where Ukraine launched counteroffensives this month, as well as in parts of Donetsk in the south-east.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, vowed there would be no letup in fighting to regain territory lost to Russia.
In an intelligence update, Britain’s defence ministry said Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure, including a power grid and a dam, had intensified.
Ukrainian forces are refusing to discard worn-out US-provided arms, with many reverse engineering spare parts to continue the counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion.
Reuters contributed to this report
Apparent change of heart by de facto ruler suggests relations with west have not fully recovered from murder of Jamal Khashoggi
Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is no longer expected to attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday, a British Foreign Office source said on Sunday, contrary to Britain’s earlier expectations that he would.
Saudi Arabia would be represented instead by Prince Turki bin Mohammed al Saud, the source said. Prince Turki is a minister of state and has been a member of the cabinet since 2018. He is the grandson of late King Fahd and part of the new generation that has been brought to power by Prince Mohammed.
Continue reading...David Hunter, who has admitted smothering wife, Janice, ‘desperate’ for case to be heard, says lawyer
A British pensioner charged in Cyprus with the premeditated murder of his terminally ill wife says he is “desperate” to have his day in court ahead of the trial opening on the island.
David Hunter is due to appear before an assize court in the coastal city of Paphos on Monday, almost nine months to the day after he admitted smothering his 75-year-old spouse, Janice, to death.
In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here
Continue reading...Singer who shot to fame in Soviet era asks to be labelled ‘foreign agent’ after husband denounced conflict
The Russian singer Alla Pugacheva has spoken out against the war in Ukraine and the “death of our boys for illusory goals”.
The remarks are the first time that the pop star, an icon in Russia, has publicly criticised the conflict.
Continue reading...European Commission proposes withholding funds as it awaits ‘gamechanger’ reforms from Orbán government
The EU’s executive arm has proposed suspending €7.5bn in financing for Hungary, as it awaited potential “gamechanger” anti-corruption reforms from Budapest.
The EU and Hungary have been at loggerheads for months, with Brussels suspecting the government led by nationalist prime minister Viktor Orbán of undercutting the rule of law and using EU money to enrich its cronies.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ukraine lobbying UN and allies to clear legal path for extracting Russian compensation for war damage
Ukraine is facing a battle to persuade its western allies, including the UK, to back its proposal for any peace settlement with Moscow to include multibillion reparations by Russia, in part using seized Russian state and oligarch assets.
Ukraine is lobbying the UN general assembly to adopt a resolution that will become the basis for the creation of an international compensation mechanism that could lead to the seizure of as much as $300bn (£260bn) of Russian state assets overseas.
Continue reading...Amini, 22, reportedly beaten by morality police in Tehran for not complying with hijab regulations
More than 30 Iranians were injured, some seriously, while taking to the streets to protest after the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman three days after she was arrested and reportedly beaten by morality police in Tehran.
The circumstances of Mahsa Amini’s death on Friday are hotly contested, but her family denied official reports that she suffered from epilepsy and instead claimed she was beaten by police.
Continue reading...Oleh Syniehubov said four medics were killed and two patients injured after Russian forces fired on psychiatric hospital
Continue reading...Staff forced to choose between collaborating or fighting against Russian takeover of schools
At the beginning of summer, several months after the Russians had taken over a large chunk of southern Ukraine in the first days of the war, the headteacher of a school in an occupied town gathered his teaching collective for a meeting.
The school would cooperate with the Russian occupation authorities, he told them, and reopen for the new school year in September, teaching the Russian curriculum.
Continue reading...Giorgia Meloni once railed against Brussels, but experts suggest favourite to replace Draghi has no interest in rocking boat
At a gathering of Europe’s far right in February 2020, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, railed against the “Brussels techno bureaucrats” who she said wanted to impose “the Soviet plan to destroy national and religious identities” – a typically bombastic claim of Eurosceptic nationalists. Now on the brink of becoming Italy’s first far-right prime minister, Meloni is sounding a rather different tune.
In an opinion article for Il Messaggero newspaper last month, Meloni said she wanted to work “in compliance with European regulations and in agreement with the [European] Commission” to use EU resources to promote Italy’s growth and innovation – a line so conventional it could drop into the speech of any aspiring pro-EU technocrat. Speaking in a video message broadcast in English, French and Spanish, she hit back at the “absurd narrative” her party would jeopardise Italy’s access to €191.5bn (£166.26bn) in EU Covid recovery funds. Meloni, who has sought to distance the Brothers of Italy from its fascist origins, said her party shared “values and experiences” with British Conservatives, US Republicans and Israel’s Likud party.
Continue reading...British prime minister and Micheál Martin understood to have agreed there is opportunity for reset of relations
Hopes that talks between the UK and the EU will resume over a protracted dispute about the Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland have risen after a 45-minute meeting between Liz Truss and the Irish prime minister in Downing Street on Sunday morning.
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, was one of five world leaders to have “leaders’ meetings” with the British prime minister before the Queen’s funeral on Monday, in what was seen by some as a mark of the UK’s determination to reset soured relations with its neighbour.
Continue reading...Former Israeli prime minister rallies supporters from behind bulletproof glass of modified delivery van
As Israel prepares to head to the ballot box for the fifth time in less than four years, the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has turned to a new gimmick in the hope of energising a weary electorate: the “Bibibus”.
Likened to the popemobile or an aquarium, the rightwing Likud party leader is on the campaign trail in a modified delivery van, one of the sides of which has been replaced with bulletproof glass.
Continue reading...Polls show former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is on course for a return to power
It was a scene that could have been plucked from Brazil’s history books: an enraptured crowd, a sea of flags and, on stage above them, a bearded leftist in a bright red shirt.
“The president of hope is here!” the master of ceremonies roared as the star of the show arrived in a police convoy to address the people whose country he is promising to save.
Continue reading...Train partially derails and residents are trapped inside collapsed block after 6.9-magnitude quake
At least one person has died after a strong earthquake shook much of Taiwan, toppling a three-storey building and temporarily trapping four people inside, leaving about 400 tourists stranded on a mountain and derailing part of a train.
The 6.9-magnitude quake was the largest of more than 75 that rattled the island’s south-eastern coast between Saturday evening, when a 6.4-magnitude quake struck the same area, and Sunday afternoon.
Continue reading...More than 7 million people urged to take refuge as Typhoon Nanmadol hits south-west of country with 150mph winds
Typhoon Nanmadol made landfall in south-western Japan on Sunday night, with authorities urging millions of people to take shelter from the powerful storm’s high winds and torrential rain.
The storm officially made landfall at about 7pm local time (11am BST) as its eyewall – the region just outside the eye – arrived near Kagoshima, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.
Continue reading...Joke by joke, standup sensation Sherihan El Hadwa is challenging lazy stereotypes about victimhood
On a small stage in Tulkarm, a city in the north of the occupied West Bank, Sherihan El Hadwa emerges from the wings to a Palestinian pop song. Dancing and waving the long white cane she uses to navigate the world, the visually impaired comedian already has her audience laughing and clapping along to the music.
Hadwa did not have an obvious route into standup comedy, and the many difficulties of life as a disabled woman in the Palestinian territories are not a straightforwardly humorous topic.
Continue reading...Despite superior firepower, Russian forces have failed to fulfil their potential and face a dispiriting battle to regain the upper hand over Ukraine
Viewed purely in terms of the size of their formations and equipment, Russian ground forces in Ukraine still pose a serious threat on a number of axes. In practice, however, it is highly unlikely the Russian military can recover from its increasingly terminal trajectory on the battlefield, though its defeat will take time and bitter fighting. To understand why, it is necessary to examine the force beyond its equipment and personnel.
The US assesses military capability through the abbreviation DOTMLPF. That senior US officers regularly try to roll this off the tongue as an acronym may exemplify military absurdity, but the abbreviation is somewhat redeemed by being fairly comprehensive. It stands for: doctrine, organisation, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities. Looking at the Russian military across these categories reveals why it is underperforming its potential and struggling to regenerate.
Continue reading...MPs in talks with Taiwan to help phase out Confucius Institutes as relations between the countries worsen
A group of cross-party MPs is in talks with Taiwan to provide Mandarin teachers to the UK as the government seeks to phase out Chinese state-linked Confucius Institutes, the Observer has learned.
There are currently 30 branches of the Confucius Institute operating across the UK. Although controversies have existed for many years, they have continued to teach Britons Chinese language, culture and business etiquette. These schools are effectively joint ventures between a host university in Britain, a partner university in China, and the Chinese International Education Foundation (CIEF), a Beijing-based organisation.
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