Mothballed facility in Lower Saxony gets emergency permission to run until April
A coal-fired power plant that had been mothballed has become the first of its kind to be put back on to the network in Germany, as debate rages over how Europe’s largest economy will cope without Russian gas.
The facility in Lower Saxony, which is owned by the Czech energy company EGH, has received emergency permission to run until April in an attempt to boost energy production.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Tom Tugendhat likely to lead trip later this year as London’s relationship with Beijing deteriorates
Britain’s House of Commons foreign affairs committee is planning a visit to Taiwan later this year – probably in November or early December – despite rising tensions in the region, the Guardian has learned.
Sources say the trip – which was originally scheduled for early this year but was postponed due to one member of the delegation testing positive for Covid – was intended to show Britain’s support for the democratically run island, which China considers its own.
Continue reading...Emilian Gebrev says explosion on Sunday is latest of repeated attacks against him by GRU operatives
A Bulgarian arms dealer who survived an apparent novichok poisoning in 2015 said he was “100% sure” that Russian operatives were behind an explosion and subsequent fire at one of his depots in the country on Sunday.
“There is no way this could be an accident, there was nothing in the building that could have detonated without outside interference,” Emilian Gebrev said in a telephone interview.
Continue reading...Exhibition includes two specially commissioned works reframing story of former Trinidad governor
For more than a century, the portrait of Thomas Picton hung in a prominent position at the National Museum Cardiff, the image’s description hailing him as a military hero rather than a tyrant and a torturer, before it was removed from view in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.
From Monday the two-metre-tall portrait of Lt Gen Picton is back on display in the Welsh capital – but in a very different context.
Continue reading...Employees of contractor questioned over alleged vandalism after colourful murals painted over
A popular cultural attraction and one of Taiwan’s most “Instagrammable” sites has allegedly been defaced by the operators contracted to run it, after they were told to move out for six months while restoration work was conducted.
It was discovered on Friday that many of the walls of the Rainbow Village had been covered with paint overnight. Police detained 14 employees of the Rainbow Creative Co for questioning over the alleged vandalism, including the company’s head, Wei Pi-Jen, who defended their actions as a protest rather than “malicious destruction”. They were released on Sunday.
Continue reading...Further heavy rainfall forecast after deadly lightning strikes and flooding last week
The monsoon season in India and Pakistan is well under way, with further heavy rain events expected in parts of south-west India over the next week or so. The states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala in particular could experience rainfall totals above 200mm widely over the next couple of days.
Towards the weekend, this risk could transfer further north and east across India, with 200mm potentially affecting central states. This follows a week when dozens were killed by lightning strikes in India, while hundreds died in severe flooding in neighbouring Pakistan.
Continue reading...City’s mayor condemns attack on medical facilities; former UK PM David Cameron also among those now blacklisted
Oleh Synyehubov, the governor of Kharkiv, has posted to Telegram to say that two men were injured by shelling at 7am today in the Saltivka region of Kharkiv. One of the men, aged 72, subsequently died in hospital. The claim has not been independently verified.
About 300 people are now considered missing during the hostilities in the Kyiv region. The 216 bodies found have not yet been identified. An appropriate DNA selection procedure was carried out. I hope that thanks to cooperation with relatives, we will be able to identify these persons.
It is not only that some citizens are now in captivity. While documenting war crimes in the Kyiv region, we found out that many people are currently being held on the territory of Belarus.
Continue reading...Secret schools formed as girls banned from classes languish with no accredited route to university
The Taliban’s ban on girls studying at high schools will become a de facto ban on university degrees for women if it stays in place, a Taliban spokesperson and university officials have said.
Girls will not have the documents needed to enrol in higher education, or the academic capacity to start university courses after nearly a year out of school.
Continue reading...Cruise ships, international students and visitors from China and India among those who will be able to once again travel to New Zealand
New Zealand’s borders are fully open for the first time since they abruptly snapped shut to keep Covid-19 out in March 2020.
The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the nation was “open for business” after the final stage of the phased reopening, which began in April, was completed on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Despite their differences the nations have shared interests, Jacinda Ardern says as she plans trip to China
New Zealand will continue to cooperate on “shared interests” with China, even as tensions increase in the region and China grows “more assertive in the pursuit of its interests”, Jacinda Ardern has said.
Speaking to the China Business Summit in Auckland on Monday, the prime minister said she was planning a trip to China “to seize new opportunities for dialogue,” support the trade relationship, and further cooperate on the climate crisis.
Continue reading...First grain ship departs from Odesa as part of Turkey-brokered export deal; Russia says five injured in Black Sea drone attack
Continue reading...Protesters set up roadblocks and shots were fired after Pristina brought in rules that would mean Serbs in Kosovo must use Kosovo licence plates
The Kosovo government postponed implementation of a decision that would oblige Serbs in the north of the country to apply for car license plates issued by Pristina institutions after tensions rose between police and local communities.
Late on Sunday protesters parked trucks filled with gravel and other heavy machinery on roads leading to two border crossings, Jarinje and Bernjak, in a territory where Serbs form a majority. Kosovo police said they had to close the border crossings.
Continue reading...Sharpest contraction is in energy-intensive industries, such as petrol, coking coal and ferrous metals
China’s factory activity unexpectedly shrank in July as sporadic Covid outbreaks disrupted the sector and the slowing global economy weighed on demand.
The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell to 49.0 in July from 50.2 in June, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday. That was weaker than forecast, below the 50-point mark separating expansion from contraction.
Continue reading...Some see youth football tournament as former president’s latest attempt to remain in running for 2025 elections
Politics and football have long mixed in South America, but not perhaps to this extent. On Sunday the Copa Evo, an international youth football tournament arranged by and named after Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales, kicked off in the country’s coca-growing tropics.
The buildup was dominated by political scraps, with the opposition questioning the involvement of the national football federation in a tournament that bears Morales’s name.
Continue reading...Blaze caused by fermenting grains had been smouldering for weeks, with people told to stay indoors
A section of the huge grain silos at Beirut’s port, shredded in the 2020 explosion in the Lebanese capital, collapsed on Sunday after a weeks-long fire triggered by grains that had fermented and ignited in the summer heat.
The northern block of the silos fell in a huge cloud of dust after what sounded like an explosion. It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands ‘must evacuate Donetsk’ to avoid falling into enemy hands, says Ukrainian president
Russia has said it has invited United Nations and Red Cross experts to investigate the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Moscow-backed separatists, Reuters reports.
At least 50 prisoners of war were killed in an attack on a jail in Olenivka, in Russian-occupied Donetsk, on Friday. Both sides in the war have blamed the blast on each other.
Continue reading...Cameraman Daniel McGovern copied footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastation to ensure lessons were learned
The photograph shows devastation in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb: a scorched wilderness where there was once a city. At its centre stands a lone man with a camera.
It was 9 September 1945 and Lt Daniel McGovern, a US Army Air Force cameraman, was documenting ground zero, the point directly below the bomb’s detonation four weeks earlier. Few would recognise McGovern, but the vision of apocalypse is familiar from documentary footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.
Continue reading...Routes that are usually safe at this time of year now face hazards as a result of warmer temperatures
Little snow cover and glaciers melting at an alarming rate in Europe’s heatwaves have put some classic Alpine hiking routes off-limits.
Usually at the height of summer tourists flock to the Alps and seek out well-trodden paths up to some of its peaks. But with warmer temperatures – which scientists say are driven by climate change – speeding up glacier melt and thawing permafrost, routes that are usually safe at this time of year now face hazards such as falling rocks released from the ice.
Continue reading...Vermont senator opposed ‘corporate welfare’ to firms paying huge salaries to executives – but Chips and Science Act passed Congress
When it comes to alliances in Washington, few are as unlikely as the common ground the democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders briefly found with the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity, two architects of conservative policies across the United States.
Yet that is what happened this week when Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, made a lonely and unsuccessful stand against a $280bn bill funding scientific research and, controversially, giving computer chip manufacturers financial incentives to build more production in the United States – one that rightwing groups also encouraged lawmakers to make.
Continue reading...Former US Marine with a progressive take on identity and masculinity hopes Missouri Democrats will pick him as their nominee for US Senate
Lucas Kunce thinks populism has been given a bad name. “It’s outrageous,” he says, “that people call the Josh Hawleys, the Eric Greitens, the Donald Trumps of the world populist. Populism is about everyday people coming together to have power in a system that’s not working for them. So do that, Josh Hawley. I mean, good Lord, what a charlatan.”
Kunce is running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Missouri, in the fight to take the state’s second seat in Washington, alongside Hawley. The primary is on Tuesday.
Continue reading...