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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Kyiv mayor orders air-raid shelters to operate around the clock; Washington says training for Ukraine on advanced US Abrams tanks has begun
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Dupont, Chemours and Corteva agree deal and 3M also reportedly considering $10bn settlement to avoid trial due to start on Monday
DuPont and two related companies said they would pay close to $1.2bn to settle liability claims brought by public water systems serving the vast majority of the US population on Friday, just days before the start of a bellwether trial in South Carolina over PFAS contamination.
PFAS maker 3M was reportedly also considering a settlement that would keep the company from having to face allegations that it was responsible for knowingly contaminating drinking water supplies around the United States.
Continue reading...Flies chilled to sub-zero temperatures amputate one or more of their six limbs to protect their internal organs
Flightless snow flies in the US and Canada can amputate their legs to survive as they begin to freeze, researchers have discovered.
Lab experiments in which the flies were chilled gradually to sub-zero temperatures revealed they can detach one or more of their six legs, an apparent “last-ditch tactic” to protect their internal organs from the advancing cold.
Continue reading...Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with Colombian mercenaries, to kill Jovenel Moïse in 2021
A mastermind of the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse two years ago has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a federal court judge in Florida.
Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with a group of Colombian mercenaries to murder Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021. Prosecutors at his sentencing hearing in Miami said Jaar obtained the weapons used in the “commando-style” attack that killed Moïse, 53, and seriously injured his wife.
Continue reading...Strikes on the capital have caused few casualties but residents face a new ‘psychological terror’
When the air raid alarms go off at around 3am, the first things exhausted Kyvians do is reach for their mobile phones, check the news, message family and friends – and start listening to the explosions that almost certainly follow.
“You wake up, go to a safe space, maybe a shelter, holding your phone. You cannot work, you cannot read; you sit and look around and wait. In the worst case, you hear a distinctive noise, maybe like a motorcycle passing by,” said Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP and leader of the liberal Holos party.
Continue reading...Attacks said to be ongoing in Russian border region, but no new casualties; Moscow launches sixth airstrike in six days
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, has posted some more details of Russia’s overnight attack on Kyiv to his official Telegram channel. He writes:
The occupiers continue to terrorise Ukraine with attack drones and missiles.
Around 11pm the enemy attacked Kyiv with Shahed-136/131 kamikaze drones. They entered from the southern direction, using the topography of the area and the course of the Dnieper River.
The aggressor does not stop. Nikopol region came under attack again. At midnight, the Rashists shelled Nikopol. Shells from heavy artillery flew into the city. People are unharmed. Rescuers are examining the area. The enemy is insidious and does not abandon its tactics of terrorising the civilian population.
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