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...Images leaked by Russian security services are consistent with one another and appear distorted due to being pictures of a digital screen
A raid on Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mansion in St Petersburg by security services has revealed his possession of some interesting items.
Among them was a wardrobe full of wigs, and photos of Prigozhin in various disguises wearing those wigs, which were allegedly taken from his personal album.
Continue reading...PM Mark Rutte disbands cabinet after four parties in government coalition disagree over asylum seeker policy
Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, has announced his resignation and that of his cabinet, citing irreconcilable differences within his four-party coalition about how to control immigration.
The decision on Friday by the Netherlands’ longest-serving premier means the country will face a general election later this year for the 150-seat lower house of parliament.
Continue reading...Washington denies authorising former officials’ meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov
Joe Biden’s administration did not sanction or support secret meetings that former top US national security officials held with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and other Russians on potential talks to end the Ukraine war, the White House and state department have said.
America’s NBC News network reported that the former officials met Lavrov in New York in April, joined by Richard Haass, a former US diplomat and outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank in Washington, and two former White House aides, Charles Kupchan and Thomas Graham.
Continue reading...Workers charged with culpable homicide and destruction of evidence after one of country’s deadliest rail accidents
Three men have been arrested in India over a triple-train collision that killed nearly 300 people last month, one of the worst rail accidents in the country’s history, police have said.
The train crash in eastern Odisha state occurred when a packed passenger train was mistakenly diverted on to a loop line and hit a stationary goods train.
Continue reading...More than 9m hectares of country had burned, federal data shows, shattering 34-year record
Canadian officials have warned that the country faces a “long, tough summer” of wildfires as the current season shatters previous records and forecasts predict even hotter temperatures to come.
Federal data showed that on Friday more than 9m hectares (22.2m acres) of the country had burned, shattering a 34-year record.
Continue reading...Palestinian health ministry says ‘two martyrs’, Khairi Shaheen, 34, and Hamza Maqbul, 32, were killed in Nablus
Israeli forces have killed two Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank during a raid on the northern city of Nablus, Israeli and Palestinian officials have said.
The Palestinian health ministry announced “two martyrs and three injured as a result of the occupation aggression on Nablus”.
Continue reading...In a ‘message of hope’ the animals have been brought in from Namibia to establish a group in their historical homeland
After an epic 36-hour journey, the first native giraffes to be returned to an Angolan national park arrived from Namibia this week, in what many hope to be the first of multiple translocations to return the animals to their historical homeland.
The giraffes, seven males and seven females, travelled more than 800 miles (1,300km) from a private game farm near Otjiwarongo in the Otjozondjupa region of central Namibia to Iona national park in the south-west corner of Angola.
Continue reading...While South Korea offers official support, China and other voices in region continue to express concerns over discharge from nuclear plant
The publication this week of the UN nuclear watchdog’s positive assessment of Japanese plans to pump more than 1m tonnes of water from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean has failed to placate opponents.
China is fiercely opposed to the plans, despite a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) backing the scheme, while the support of the government of South Korea has failed to quell widespread public opposition to the idea in the country.
Continue reading...Judge calls conviction of opposition leader ‘just, proper and legal’ as lawyer vows to take case to supreme court
India’s most well-known opposition leader Rahul Gandhi is facing another setback after a high court judge refused to suspend his conviction for defamation, a case critics allege is politically motivated.
The judge in Gujarat high court called Gandhi’s conviction “just, proper and legal” and said “no injustice” would be done to the politician by refusing to grant his plea.
Continue reading...The judge rejected Serge Paincahud’s ‘scared’ defense to fire at a black bear while illegally carrying a shotgun on a trail
A Canadian man, who had pleaded guilty to shooting a black bear in a national park, will pay a fine of C$7,500 after the judge rejected his “fear” of the predator as justification for bringing a loaded firearm on a popular hiking trail.
Serge Painchaud, 42, was this week fined for violating a hunting restriction under the National Parks Act.
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