Category Archives: World News

Makers of Lightyear flop among Pixar job cuts by Disney

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Director and producer of Toy Story spinoff lose roles after $200m production brought in just $226.7m in global ticket sales

Walt Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios has eliminated 75 positions including those of two executives behind the box office disappointment Lightyear, sources said on Saturday, the first significant job cuts at the studio in a decade.

The cuts included Lightyear director Angus MacLane, a 26-year Pixar veteran who was part of the senior creative team on such acclaimed films as Toy Story 4 and Coco. Galyn Susman, producer of Lightyear, also departed. Susman had been at Pixar since the release of the original Toy Story movie in 1995.

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Tiananmen massacre museum opens in New York despite fear of Beijing backlash

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Communist party has campaigned for decades to eradicate remembrance events for the 4 June clashes in Beijing

When Zhou Fengsuo was looking for a space in New York to display his art collection, he couldn’t believe his luck when he stumbled across 894 6th Avenue in the heart of midtown Manhattan. The numbers of the address – 8946 – were the same as the date he wanted to commemorate: 4 June 1989. It was “unbelievable”, the former student leader marvelled.

That Zhou’s collection, which opened to the public on Friday as part of the June 4th Memorial Museum, ended up in such an uncanny location is the result of a concerted, decades-long campaign by the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to eradicate any remembrance of the 1989 massacre around Tiananmen Square anywhere in the world.

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Modi has spent billions modernising India’s trains but safety is biggest need

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Though the number of railway accidents has come down in the past few years, derailment remains the main cause

There is no railway system quite like the Indian railways. Trains remain an essential lifeline in India, the world’s most populous country of 1.4 billion people, carrying about 13 million passengers a day for work, family and leisure on trains that weave across 40,000 miles of track, more than enough to wrap around the Earth.

Friday night’s collision involving two passenger trains and a freight train in the eastern state of Odisha was one of the worst accidents since 1999, when a collision between two trains in West Bengal killed 285 people. More recently, 160 people died in 2016 when the Indore-Patna Express derailed and as recently as February, two goods trains collided in Uttar Pradesh.

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Utah school district that banned Bible considers removing Book of Mormon

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Davis school district says it will assess text after complaint for ‘pornographic or indecent materials’ under law passed last year

A school district in Utah that last week banned the Bible from school libraries is now being asked to consider a further title for removal: the Book of Mormon.

The Davis school district, which serves Davis county, north of Salt Lake City, said it was considering a new complaint demanding the removal of the foundational text of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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Humpback whale freed after gruelling eight-hour rescue mission in Australia

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Deteriorating conditions and other whales in area south of Sydney hampered attempts, say rescuers

A humpback whale trapped in waters south of Sydney has finally been freed after a gruelling eight-hour rescue mission.

Rescue efforts began on Saturday morning after reports of a whale in distress off Five Islands near Port Kembla. Volunteer crews from Marine Rescue NSW and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service were called to assist at about 8.30am.

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Turkey to send commandos to Kosovo in response to Nato peacekeeping call

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EU has called on leaders in Kosovo and Serbia to immediately reduce tensions and halt ‘divisive rhetoric’

Turkey has announced it will be sending commandos to Kosovo on Sunday in response to a Nato request to join the peacekeeping operation after unrest in the north of the country.

In a statement on Saturday, the Turkish defence ministry called for restraint and constructive dialogue to resolve a crisis it said could harm regional security and stability.

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Three Israeli soldiers killed along Egyptian border

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Details about gunman, who Israeli army says was also killed after a manhunt, have not been released

Two Israeli soldiers have been killed in a rare shooting along the Egyptian border, triggering a manhunt in which a third soldier and the “assailant” were killed, the army said.

A fourth soldier, a non-commissioned officer, was lightly wounded and evacuated to hospital, it added. The military said an assailant was in Israeli territory when he opened fire at troops. The soldiers returned fire, killing the gunman.

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Montreal: holdout tenant halts developer’s push to force her out

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Focus over affordable housing as Carla White says she will not leave unless Mondev provides similar apartment with cheap rent

A single holdout tenant in a Montreal apartment block has halted a multimillion-dollar development project, in a standoff which has focused fresh attention on the lack of affordable housing in major Canadian cities.

Real estate developer Mondev has been trying for years to persuade Carla White to move from her small, C$400-a-month apartment so it can demolish a row of mostly abandoned buildings and build 176 condominium units.

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‘We will succeed’: Zelenskiy says Ukraine ready to launch counteroffensive

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Ukraine’s president hints at concern over a possible Trump return in 2024 in Wall Street Journal interview

Ukraine’s president has declared his country’s military is ready to launch a long-awaited counteroffensive and hinted at concern about the possibility of Donald Trump retaking the White House.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal, suggested that a significant attack could come soon and said he hoped a change in the US presidency would not impact military aid to Kyiv.

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‘Much easier to say no’: Irish town unites in smartphone ban for young children

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Parents and schools across Greystones adopt voluntary ‘no-smartphone code’ in bid to curb peer pressure

On the principle of strength in numbers, parents in the Irish town of Greystones have banded together to collectively tell their children they cannot have a smartphone until secondary school.

Parents’ associations across the district’s eight primary schools have adopted a no-smartphone code to present a united front against children’s lobbying.

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Russia-Ukraine war as it happened: Kremlin infighting ‘destroying Russian state’, says Wagner head

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Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin criticises factionalism within Russian hierarchy

Petraeus continued to discuss Putin and whether he could escalate attacks:

I think you can’t dismiss it. But I think that the actions to dissuade him from doing that have been very considerable. And I think I would certainly hope that they have convinced him that he and Russia would be much worse off if tactical nuclear weapons were used.

President Xi, his partner without limits has actually turned out to have very distinct limits, and prime minister Modi from India at their summit, some months back, both of them made it very clear that this is something he shouldn’t even think about.

I do tend to think that they [Ukraine] will cut this ability of the Russians to resupply Crimea, along the southeast coast, they will severe that line of communication and begin the process of isolating Crimea as well.

Not in this counteroffensive. No.

But if they can get to the point of beginning to isolate Crimea, I think that changes the dynamics very, very substantially. It couldn’t even prompt Putin to start to consider a negotiated resolution.

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‘Wailing for help’: passengers and bystanders tell of India train crash horror

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Relatives tell of agony of searching for survivors among what one called ‘heaps of bodies’ as rescue activities draw to a close

The carriages from three trains sat piled high in an entangled wreck. Some lay sideways, while others had been thrown so high into the air on impact that they had fallen back to earth twisted and upside down.

A line of dozens of bodies covered in white sheets were laid out next to the wreckage waiting for vehicles – ambulances, local cars, even tractors – to take them away to local hospitals. Passengers’ possessions lay scattered around them, shoes and toys and thrown-open suitcases.

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Imran Khan’s political games leave him isolated as Pakistan army destroys party

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Allies desert former prime minister amid disappearances and torture as powerful military reasserts control

In recent days, Imran Khan has cut an increasingly isolated figure. Since Pakistan’s former prime minister was released from jail, after a brief but explosive attempt to arrest him last month, his return has been marked by a mass exodus of the top leadership of his party, on a scale that has surprised even his critics.

Late on Thursday night, Pervez Khattak, the former chief minister and defence minister, became the latest high-profile resignation from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. He followed in the path of Khan’s former finance minister, his former human rights minister, his former information minister and his former shipping minister, who all stepped down from senior posts or left PTI altogether in recent weeks. Dozens of other federal and state ministers have followed suit.

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Iraq’s oil boom blamed for worsening water crisis in drought-hit south

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Pollution from gas flaring – the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction – is also a major concern in the oil-rich but extremely dry south

Western oil companies are exacerbating water shortages and causing pollution in Iraq as they race to profit from rising oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Water scarcity has already displaced thousands and increased instability, according to international experts, while Iraq is now considered the fifth most vulnerable country to the climate crisis by the UN. In the oil-rich but extremely dry south, wetlands that used to feed entire communities are now muddy canals.

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India train crash: at least 288 killed and 803 injured in Odisha state

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Rescue operation under way with death toll expected to rise in India’s worst rail disaster in more than 20 years

At least 288 people have been killed and 803 injured after two passenger trains collided in the eastern Indian state of Odisha – the country’s deadliest rail disaster in more than 20 years.

The Coromandel Express, which runs from Kolkata in West Bengal to Chennai in Tamil Nadu, was going about 80mph (130km/h) when it collided with a stationary freight train at about 7pm on Friday, causing it to derail.

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Washington won’t stand for China ‘bullying’ US allies, Lloyd Austin tells summit

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Defence secretary also criticises Beijing’s unwillingness to engage with US on military crisis management

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has vowed that Washington will not stand for any “coercion and bullying” of its allies and partners by China, while assuring Beijing that the US remains committed to maintaining the status quo on Taiwan and would prefer dialogue over conflict.

Speaking in Singapore at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s top security summit, Austin lobbied for support for Washington’s vision of a “free, open and secure Indo-Pacific within a world of rules and rights” as the best course to counter increasing Chinese assertiveness in the region.

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Biden praises passage of debt ceiling bill in Oval Office address ahead of signing it

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President described how ‘no one got everything they wanted, but the American people got what they needed’ during brief speech

Joe Biden celebrated Congress’s approval of a debt-ceiling suspension in a speech delivered from the Oval Office on Friday night, a day after the Senate passed the compromise bill brokered by the president and the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

Biden described the bill’s enactment as “essential to the progress we’ve made over the last few years” in “keeping full faith and credit of the United States of America and passing a budget that continues to grow our economy and reflects our values as a nation”.

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US air quality as far south as Virginia affected by Nova Scotia wildfires

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National Weather Service issues air quality alert for Richmond while Maryland, Pennsylvania and other states affected

The historically intense wildfires that battered the Nova Scotia province on the eastern coast of Canada have had a severe effect on air quality as far south as Virginia and Maryland, the US National Weather Service alerted.

Four wildfires have destroyed hundreds of buildings and homes and displaced tens of thousands of people, hitting the Halifax municipality hardest. But the blazes have also sent smoke billowing over New York City, and have prompted officials from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia to report negative effects on their air quality.

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Texas woman dies of infection linked to cosmetic surgery in Mexico

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Family says Lauren Brooke Robinson, who reportedly contracted fungal meningitis, began to feel ill months after February surgery

A Texas woman has died after contracting fungal meningitis in an outbreak that has been linked to a cosmetic procedure performed in Mexico.

Lauren Brooke Robinson, 29, died on Wednesday from a fungal meningitis infection after receiving cosmetic surgery in Mexico, the local TV news station KBMT reported.

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