Authorities deployed troops and shut down the internet as a precautionary measure, police said
Indian Kashmir politician Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a veteran separatist, has died in Srinagar. He was 91 years old.
In response to the news, authorities deployed troops around the city.
Continue reading...‘This is not the first threat to Roe we've seen in a state across the country. It's an extreme threat,' the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said after one of the most restrictive state abortion laws went into effect in Texas. Psaki said the Biden administration would fight to protect the constitutional right to abortion as laid out in the landmark Roe v Wade case
Conditional approval for plan to organize drugmaker into new company with board appointed by public officials
A US federal bankruptcy judge on Wednesday conditionally approved a sweeping, potentially $10bn plan submitted by the OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to settle a mountain of lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis that has killed a half-million Americans over the past two decades.
Related: Former Purdue Pharma chair denies responsibility for US opioid crisis
Continue reading...Palestinians are being repressed and brutalised by their own government in collaboration with the Israeli state
On 24 June, Nizar Banat, a longtime activist and outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority (PA), was reportedly arrested and beaten outside his cousin’s home in Hebron by the authority’s security forces – he died in custody shortly after. In regular videos recorded and posted to his social media accounts, Banat often took the Palestinian Authority to task for its corruption, lack of democratic practice and collaboration with Israel. A few days prior to his death, he had uploaded a video in which he accused the authority of selling out the Palestinian struggle.
Related: Nizar Banat’s death highlights brutality of Palestinian Authority
Continue reading...Analysis: Insurgents’ cooperation is needed for evacuations, but PM could face criticism for engaging with them
Boris Johnson’s decision to dispatch a senior spy chief to talk directly to the Taliban in Qatar reflects an uncomfortable but necessary reality: the UK has little option but to engage with the insurgent group now in control of Afghanistan.
Thousands of Afghans eligible for resettlement in the UK are believed to remain trapped in the country – UK ministers refuse to say how many – and hundreds of British nationals. With western troops withdrawn, it is only with Taliban cooperation that people will be able to leave safely and smoothly.
Continue reading...Mu has been designated a ‘variant of interest’ and has mutations suggesting it could be more resistant to vaccines; nationwide booster campaign to begin in French care homes on 12 September
Portugal will tourists from Brazil to enter the country, ending the ban it imposed on non-essential travel from the South American country nearly 18 months ago.
Until now, Brazilians were only allowed to enter Portugal for reasons including work or health concerns. Travellers from Brazil will have to show a negative Covid-19 test, but will no longer have to quarantine, Reuters reports.
Around 10,000 unvaccinated health workers in Greece are facing suspension, a union has said.
The Greek parliament in July passed legislation to make vaccinations mandatory for health staff from 1 September, and health minister Athanasios Plevris said on Wednesday that the law “will be implemented”, AFP reports.
We are pushing health workers to be vaccinated, but we are against compulsory vaccination, which poses a democratic problem.
Continue reading...Flames raced across treetops and through drought-stricken vegetation as firefighters scrambled Wednesday to keep a growing California wildfire from reaching a resort city at the southern tip of Lake Tahoe after evacuation orders were expanded to neighboring Nevada.
Related: Empty beaches and eerie skies as Caldor fire looms over Lake Tahoe – in pictures
Continue reading...Two cops are stranded in hostile territory when an act of police brutality triggers a riot in this slick action film
Denmark’s reputation as the land of tolerance, equality and cosy contentment takes a battering in this superslick urban thriller directed with adrenaline and savvy by first timers Frederik Louis Hviid and Anders Ølholm. “Shorta” is Arabic for “police”, and the movie opens with black teenager Talib Ben Hassi lying face down, a white police officer on his back. “I can’t breathe,” he pleads. We don’t see Talib again but his name is repeated over and over: on the streets in Svalegårdena, the fictional estate where he grew up; by TV journalists reporting on his condition in intensive care; at the police station where damage limitation is in overdrive.
Officers are warned to stay out of Svalegårdena – a powder keg waiting to explode. The shift commander puts solidly decent Jens (Simon Sears) in a car with repellent racist Mike (Jacob Hauberg Lohmann), a man who demands respect by bullying and intimidation. The script sets up these familiar cop stereotypes then messes with them – not massively convincingly to be honest. Jens in particular I found difficult to get a handle on; this is a film where characters act in ways to make the plot tick more than anything else. Things go wrong when Mike stops and searches cheeky Arab kid Amos (Tarek Zayat). He goes in hard, humiliates Amos, arrests him; at that moment news breaks that Talib is dead, triggering a riot.
Continue reading...Syed Taalay Ahmed, who worked for Muslim Television Ahmadiyaa International, was ambushed in Tamale
Tributes have been paid to a British journalist who was killed in an armed robbery in Ghana.
Syed Taalay Ahmed, 31, who grew up in Hartlepool, was working for Muslim Television Ahmadiyaa International (MTA) when he was killed, the station said.
Continue reading...Outgoing leader wades into election fray as Olaf Scholz says his party is more likely to uphold Merkel’s legacy
Angela Merkel has waded into the fray of Germany’s election campaign by dismissing her centre-left vice-chancellor’s attempt to model himself as her continuity candidate, as her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) tries to revive its flagging fortunes with warnings of “chaos” under a leftwing coalition government.
The intervention comes as the Social Democratic party’s (SPD) candidate for chancellor, Olaf Scholz, Merkel’s deputy in her fourth and final cabinet, is doing an increasingly effective job of convincing voters he is more likely to continue the chancellor’s centrist and rational legacy than the candidate representing her own party.
Continue reading...US tech firm fined for not complying with order to come up with proposals on compensating publishers
Google is appealing against a €500m (£430m) fine imposed by France’s antitrust watchdog after a dispute with local media about paying for news content.
The financial penalty came amid increasing international pressure on online platforms such as Google and Facebook to share more of the revenue they make from using media outlets’ content.
Continue reading...To meet climate targets and avoid economic collapse, countries such as Iraq need international support in the transition to clean energy
• Ali Allawi is deputy prime minister and finance minister of Iraq. Fatih Birol is executive director of the International Energy Agency
In the Middle East and north Africa, global warming is not a distant threat, but an already painful reality. Rising temperatures are exacerbating water shortages. In Iraq, temperatures are estimated to be rising as much as seven times faster than the global average. Countries in this region are not only uniquely affected by global temperature rises: their centrality to global oil and gas markets makes their economies particularly vulnerable to the transition away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner energy sources. It’s essential the voices of Iraq and similar countries are heard at the Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow this November.
To stand a chance of limiting the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to fundamentally change the way it produces and consumes energy, burning less coal, oil and natural gas. The International Energy Agency’s recent global roadmap to net zero by 2050 shows the world’s demand for oil will need to decline from more than 90m barrels a day to less than 25m by 2050. This would result in a 75% plunge in net revenues for oil-producing economies, many of which are dominated by a public sector that relies on oil exports and the revenues they produce.
Continue reading...Catherine Chen says Chinese telecoms firm will use technical expertise to reach new markets less dependent on the US
Huawei has been forced to adopt the mentality of a startup partly because of US government sanctions, Catherine Chen, a board member for the Chinese telecommunications company, has said.
Helping to run probably the most scrutinised company in the world, she said Huawei would survive and eventually break free of the attempted US shackles by using its technical expertise to forge a path into new markets less dependent on the US, such as energy conservation, artificial intelligence and electric cars.
Continue reading...Women forced out of jobs despite Taliban promises to allow them to keep working, survey finds
Female journalists in Afghanistan are being forced out of jobs and told to stay at home despite Taliban promises to allow them to keep working and to respect press freedom, according to a report.
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) says it believes fewer than 100 of Kabul’s 700 female journalists are still working and only a handful are continuing to work from home in two other Afghan provinces. Others have been attacked and harassed.
Continue reading...Francis ‘moved’ by Angela Merkel’s words on western intervention – in fact said by Russian president
Pope Francis has criticised the west’s recent involvement in Afghanistan – inadvertently quoting Vladimir Putin in doing so.
In a wide-ranging interview with Spanish radio station COPE, the pope was asked for his thoughts on the redrawn political map of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of the US and its allies from the country after 20 years of war.
Continue reading...Alexanda Amon Kotey is accused of conspiring to torture and behead US and European hostages in Syria
One of two British-born men charged in the US with joining Islamic State and conspiring to torture and behead American and European hostages in Syria is scheduled to plead guilty to criminal charges.
Court records show a change of plea hearing has been scheduled for Thursday in a district court in Alexandria, Virginia, for Alexanda Amon Kotey, one of four IS members who were nicknamed “the Beatles” by their captives because of their British accents.
Continue reading...Students delay studying abroad and some even switch continents because of visa delays
Thousands of British students have been hit by post-Brexit visa hurdles, leaving many struggling to complete their language courses or take up internships in the EU.
While some have delayed studying abroad or even switched continents because of visa delays, hundreds of undergraduates taking modern foreign language courses may miss out on a vital part of their degree.
Continue reading...Dogs seem to be able to grasp notion of human intention, say researchers
From a canny look to a quizzical grumble, dogs have long conveyed the impression they know more about what their owners are up to than what might be expected. Now researchers have found fresh evidence of canine savviness, revealing dogs seem to be able to tell whether human actions are deliberate or accidental.
While theory of mind – the ability to attribute thoughts to others and to recognise that can result in certain behaviours – is often thought to be uniquely human, the study suggests at least some elements may be common to canines.
Continue reading...Health body says Mu, or B.1.621, first identified in Colombia, has been designated as a variant of interest
The World Health Organization has added another version of coronavirus to its list of “variants of interest” amid concerns that it may partially evade the immunity people have developed from past infection or vaccination.
The Mu variant, also known as B.1.621, was added to the WHO’s watchlist on 30 August after it was detected in 39 countries and found to possess a cluster of mutations that may make it less susceptible to the immune protection many have acquired.
Continue reading...Taliban soldiers inspected damaged aircraft and equipment at Kabul airport after the last US troops withdrew from a shattered Afghanistan. US troops destroyed more than 70 aircraft and dozens of armoured vehicles before they left. A day after their departure, Taliban supporters celebrated across the country, with even a mock funeral held with coffins draped with US, British and French flags