Category Archives: World News

New Zealand will continue to cooperate with ‘more assertive’ China, Ardern says

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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.

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Kosovo delays plan for volatile north as tensions rise near Serbian border

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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.

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China’s factory activity shrinks amid Covid disruption

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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.

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Bolivia’s Morales keeps up comeback hopes as Copa Evo kicks off

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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.

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Silos damaged in 2020 Beirut port explosion partly collapse after fire

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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.

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Zelenskiy urges civilians to leave Donetsk as city of Bakhmut comes under attack – as it happened

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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.

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US airman who rescued film of A-bomb horrors is honoured at last

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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.

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Heatwaves put classic Alpine hiking routes off-limits

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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.

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How Bernie Sanders and conservatives united against US semiconductor bill

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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.

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Lucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’

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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.

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Russia claims five injured in Ukraine drone attack on Black Sea fleet HQ

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Ukraine does not confirm involvement in Sevastopol attack, while Russia cancels Navy Day events

Russia has claimed that its Black Sea fleet headquarters in Sevastopol have been hit by a Ukrainian drone strike, wounding five people and prompting officials to cancel festivities planned for Navy Day.

The attack was reported by Mikhail Razvozhayev, the head of the local Russian administration in Sevastopol in Crimea, which was occupied and then annexed in 2014.

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Nancy Pelosi begins Asia trip but does not mention Taiwan

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Reports that House speaker could visit Taiwan have riled China; analysts say she may yet do so in unofficial capacity

The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has begun a tour of Asia but questions remain over whether it will include a stop in Taiwan.

In a press release on Sunday, Pelosi said a delegation would travel to the Indo-Pacific “to reaffirm America’s strong and unshakeable commitment to our allies and friends in the region”.

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Ukrainian offensive forces Russia to bolster troops in occupied south

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Looming battles will be crucial for course of war, warns intelligence chief

Russia is moving large numbers of troops to Ukraine’s south for battles against the country’s forces through the newly occupied territories and Crimea, according to Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence.

If Russia won, it would try to capture more territory, said Vadym Skibitsky. “They are increasing their troop numbers, preparing for our counteroffensive [in Ukraine’s south] and perhaps preparing to launch an offensive of their own. The south is key for them, above all because of Crimea,” he said.

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Women’s Euros final set for a female flypast and a full house at Wembley

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Famous fans get behind England for a gripping contest against Germany that is expected to set records

An all-female RAF flypast will grace the skies above Wembley on Sunday in celebration of a women’s football team that this weekend received good-luck messages from the prime minister, the leader of the opposition and the royal family before the Women’s Euro 2022 final against Germany.

“Your passion for the game, your tenacity in tricky spots and above all your astounding talent on the pitch have already created a summer of fantastic memories for millions of us,” Boris Johnson wrote in a letter to the England team.

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Spiritual union: why Gulf migrants are turning to evangelical Christianity

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Pentecostalism is quietly thriving, with pastors saying churches are helping low-paid workers in crisis

Evangelical Christianity is quietly flourishing among migrant groups in the Gulf as churches provide low-paid workers facing horrific abuse with aid in times of crisis, according to pastors and parishioners across the region.

About 30 million migrant workers live in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – the muscle transforming oil-based economies into glittering 21st-century metropolises.

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‘I’m so angry’: UK model’s prosthetic leg edited out of Spain ‘beach bodies’ ad

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Sian Green-Lord says use and alteration of her image without her knowledge in government poster was ‘beyond wrong’

A British model has been left “literally shaking” with anger after Spain’s summer campaign encouraging women of all shapes and sizes to hit the beach used her image without permission and edited out her prosthetic leg.

Sian Green-Lord is the second model to complain that her picture was used without her knowledge in a body-positivity promotion called “Summer is ours too”, which was launched on Wednesday by the Women’s Institute – part of Spain’s equality ministry.

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Pregnant woman shocked after GP ‘gave her anti-abortion leaflet’

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Woman was reportedly handed information from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children at London clinic

A pregnant woman who told her GP she was considering having an abortion says she was left “shocked and traumatised” after being given a leaflet for an anti-abortion group.

The woman, 38, says she was seeking treatment for a bladder problem on 19 July when a doctor at All Saints Medical Centre in Plumstead, south-east London, asked whether she was pregnant.

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Thailand’s gay-romance TV dramas help revive flagging tourism industry

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The popularity of ‘boy-love’ series sends fans from home and abroad flocking to filming locations across the country

There is a table in Soontaree Thiprat’s Phuket cafe that is always fully booked. Most of her customers at the Dibuk restaurant want to sit in the corner, at the spot with the red tablecloth and purple flower.

It is the table where the male student characters Teh and Oh-aew, played by the actors Putthipong “Billkin” Assaratanakul and Krit “PP” Amnuaydechkorn, would sit together and flirt in I Told Sunset About You and its sequel, I Promised You the Moon, a romantic Thai series that has proved hugely popular in its home country and abroad.

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PoW families wait for news following Donetsk prison attack that killed 50

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Wives of prisoners unsure whether loved ones survived blast in Olenivka as Russia and Ukraine blame each other

The families of Ukrainian prisoners of war being held in a jail in Russian-occupied Donetsk that was bombed said they are desperate for news.

The prisoners include members of the Azov battalion who were trapped in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, according to earlier statements by Russia’s ministry of defence. The prison is located in the town of Olenivka, just 10 kilometres from Ukraine’s frontlines.

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