Fans of boyband brave heavy rain to gather at Seoul bookshop for Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS
The K-pop megastars BTS have released their hotly anticipated memoir in South Korea, marking their 10th anniversary as a group.
Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS is the group’s first official book, and contains a chronological summary of their musical career as well as hints at their future endeavours.
Continue reading...American groups have helped to establish global web who share ideas and funding in bid to restrict gay and trans rights
When the US evangelical preacher and anti-LGBTQ+ crusader Scott Lively landed in Uganda in 2009 to warn of the “gay agenda”, he was arriving after a series of culture-war defeats at home.
More and more US states were recognizing same-sex marriage, and opinion polls were showing fewer and fewer Americans objected. Lively was there to offer Uganda’s lawmakers some advice on how to drum up outrage. “Emphasize the issue of the homosexual recruitment of children,” he advised.
Continue reading...US leader’s three-country tour aims to ‘showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage’ at a key time for the war in Ukraine
Joe Biden heads to Europe on Sunday for a swift tour dominated by the war in Ukraine, with membership of the expanding Nato military alliance and the US approval of cluster munitions likely to be key talking points. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the trip would “showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage”.
The US president will arrive at night in London, ahead of meetings with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and King Charles, and then head to a key Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, before travelling to Helsinki to welcome Nato’s newest member, Finland.
Continue reading...Large crowds in Tel Aviv demonstrate against Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to rein in supreme court
There have been huge anti-government protests in Tel Aviv against a renewed push by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to overhaul the justice system.
Tens of thousands demonstrated across the country, with the rally in Tel Aviv drawing crowds far larger than recent protests, N12 News and Channel 13 reported.
Continue reading...Radically different outlooks of four parties on immigration ‘unbridgeable’, says four-time prime minister
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has presented his government’s written resignation to King Willem-Alexander, who returned from holiday to receive it.
It was Rutte’s fourth government – a fragile, four-party coalition of his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the liberal democratic Democrats 66, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and centrist ChristenUnie. It took 10 months to agree its formation and it lasted less than 18 months.
Continue reading...Dozens more injured in state notorious for political violence during polls to elect local leaders
At least seven people were killed and dozens more injured in India after clashes over local polls in West Bengal, a state notorious for political violence during election campaigns.
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has in recent years worked hard to gain a toehold in West Bengal – ruled by a Communist party for much of its history – to expand its reach beyond its Hindi-speaking northern heartlands.
Continue reading...Prime minister rules out following controversial US move but says he will urge allies to increase other aid
Rishi Sunak has ruled out supplying Ukraine with cluster bombs, saying the UK will not follow the Biden administration’s controversial move and will instead press countries to boost their aid to Kyiv “in other ways”.
On Friday, Joe Biden defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to send widely banned cluster munitions to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government. Human rights groups criticised the White House and there was unease among some Democrats, with one calling it “unnecessary and a terrible mistake”.
Continue reading...Moscow says men’s return to Ukraine is a ‘direct violation’ of prisoner swap agreement
From a distance of about 3 miles (5km) the drone camera zoomed in on a group of Russian soldiers. Three of them got out of a vehicle, strolled over to a cottage, and disappeared inside. “We won’t hit them yet.
“It’s better to observe,” the drone’s Ukrainian operator – call-sign “Garry” – said. “Once we’ve destroyed them, we’ll move on to the next target.”
Today we are on Snake Island, which will never be conquered by the occupiers, like the whole of Ukraine, because we are the country of the brave.
I want to thank, from here, from this place of victory, each of our soldiers for these 500 days.
Continue reading...Rafael Grossi met with protests in Seoul during visit to try to calm fears over radioactive water discharge
Protesters have confronted the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog during a visit to South Korea in an attempt to calm fears over Japan’s plan to discharge treated radioactive water from its Fukushima plant.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Seoul on Friday to meet the foreign minister and a top nuclear safety official during a three-day visit after his trip to Japan.
Continue reading...Annual rally in memory of Adama Traoré had been moved to Paris after it was banned in Val-d’Oise
The French authorities have banned people from marching in central Paris to honour Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who died in police custody in 2016.
After a court challenge to overrule a ban on the march being held in the Val-d’Oise, north-west of Paris, failed on Friday, organisers announced it would take place instead at Place de la Républic in the capital.
Continue reading...The megastar behind Rocketman and Your Song to call time on more than 50 years of live performance
Sir Elton John will hold what he has described as his “final farewell show” in Sweden this weekend as his tour comes to an end.
The megastar played his last UK date at Glastonbury festival last month and will bring the tour to an end on Saturday at the Tele2 Arena in Stockholm.
Continue reading...Nasratullah Ahmadyar, 31, who left Afghanistan on last flight from Kabul in 2021, died in hospital after being shot in his car
A Virginia man who previously served as an interpreter for the US military in Afghanistan was fatally shot this week working as a rideshare driver in Washington.
Nasratullah Ahmadyar, 31, was shot and killed on Monday while driving for Lyft, WUSA 9 reported. He had worked as an interpreter with the army special forces, but left Afghanistan on the last flight out of the country during the US withdrawal in 2021.
Continue reading...Drones and personal watercraft among measures to protect beachgoers but expert calls for perspective over shark attack data
New York lifeguards are being trained to use drones and personal watercraft after recent shark bites off local beaches – but one shark expert believes such solutions lack specialist input.
Officials in New York’s Long Island say they are upgrading training after five people were reportedly bitten by sharks since Monday, including two minors.
Continue reading...A musical tradition has more weight than ever as Estonia looks hard at its neighbour Russia following its invasion of Ukraine
Aarne Saluveer recalls the time his cult Estonian rock band, Karavan, was invited to perform in Moscow in the 1980s, on condition they sang in Russian. “We were on a roll, performing 250 concerts a year. We refused the Soviet authorities’ request. Estonian and English only, we said, knowing that if we relented we’d lose our sense of self because if the music doesn’t come from your heart, you die.”
Four decades on he is no less steadfast, but has swapped his keyboard and vocals to conduct more than 23,000 young choristers at Estonia’s Laulupida youth song and dance festival in the capital Tallinn. The event, where Estonian choirs gather to sing the country’s folk songs, is a key expression of the Baltic state’s identity, and in the late 1980s played a vital part in bringing down communism when crowds took part in the country’s “singing revolution”.
Continue reading...‘Expected’ return could help retain scientists and researchers lost after grants were cancelled in Brexit row
British scientists and academic researchers will be able to reapply to the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) for grants if, as expected, the UK rejoins the flagship Horizon European programme, it has been confirmed.
The re-entry comes almost a year after 115 grants approved for British candidates were terminated by the council because of the delay in ratifying the UK’s associate membership of the £85bn Horizon funding scheme.
Continue reading...Ireland and Sweden join countries calling for moratorium on extraction of metals from seabed as UN-backed authority prepares for crucial talks
The list of countries calling for a pause on deep-sea mining continued to grow this week ahead of a key moment that mining companies hope will launch the fledgling industry, and its opponents hope could clip its wings, perhaps for good.
Ireland and Sweden became the latest developed economies to join critics, including scientists, environmental organisations and multinationals such as BMW, Volvo and Samsung. The carmakers have committed not to use minerals mined from the seabed in their electric vehicles.
Continue reading...US Treasury secretary says Beijing could have greater global impact if it worked with global climate institutions
US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has pressed China to do more to support international climate institutions that are helping finance green initiatives around the world, urging deeper cooperation in addressing the “existential threat” of global heating.
“Climate finance should be targeted efficiently and effectively,” Yellen said on Saturday in Beijing during a meeting with Chinese and international sustainable finance experts. “I believe that if China were to support existing multilateral climate institutions like the Green Climate Fund and the Climate Investment Funds alongside us and other donor governments, we could have a greater impact than we do today.”
Continue reading...A new Which? survey reveals that visitors are starting to look beyond the old overcrowded favourites such as Barcelona and Málaga
Ask for a lineup of the most popular European coastal destinations and you might expect the usual suspects: Venice, Lisbon and Nice. Travellers from the era of the Grand Tour might have added Biarritz and Naples – but a survey of 3,500 readers by consumer organisation Which? suggests that visitors are starting to look beyond the old favourites and discover new destinations.
The Spanish Mediterranean port of Valencia was the surprising winner in a recent poll that looked at 12 separate criteria, including quality of the beaches, seafronts and marinas; attractiveness; food and drink; and value for money. Respondents cited the city’s history, futuristic architecture and gastronomy, but also its peace and quiet. With traditional favourites such as Barcelona struggling with overpopularity – numbers there are heading back towards the 2019 high of 13.9 million overnight visitors – that seems significant.
Continue reading...Decision to approve cluster munitions, lambasted by rights groups, exposes feeling in Washington that war is reaching crunch time
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, America’s voice at the United Nations, usually chooses her words carefully. “We have seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield,” she told the general assembly last year. “That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs – which are banned under the Geneva conventions.”
The speech can be read on the official website of the US mission to the UN. But it comes with a neat metaphor for how messy diplomacy can be. The transcript of Thomas-Greenfield’s remarks now has the words “which has no place on the battlefield” crossed out, and the word “banned” comes with an asterisk: she should have said “the use of which directed against civilians is banned under the Geneva conventions”.
Continue reading...President tells CNN he took the recommendation for controversial weapons because Ukraine is ‘running out of ammunition’
The US added 209,000 new jobs in June as hiring slowed amid signs that the economy is cooling.
The rise was the weakest gain since December 2020, lower than the 240,000 jobs economists had expected and lower than the 309,000 jobs added in May. But the increase was also the 30th consecutive month of jobs gains, and the unemployment rate ticked down to the historically low rate of 3.6%.
This alarming development requires the Committee to assess White House security practices and determine whose failures led to an evacuation of the building and finding of the illegal substance.
The presence of illegal drugs in the White House is unacceptable and a shameful moment in the White House’s history.
Continue reading...