World News

Diplomats walk out on Israeli prime minister’s speech at UN to protest against devastating war on Gaza and latest attacks on Lebanon

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament and an ally of President Vladimir Putin, said a new bill would tackle the “ideology of childlessness.”

Russia’s fight against the West and its values has taken aim this week at an “ideology” that the Kremlin and its allies say threatens the country’s very foundations: people not wanting to have children.

Lawmakers have proposed a ban on “propaganda of conscious refusal to bear children,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament and an ally of President Vladimir Putin, said in a post on Telegram on Tuesday.

It is the latest effort by authorities to combat the demographic strain of falling birth rates, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin says could threaten the country’s long-term outlook. In July, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Russia’s declining birth rate “catastrophic for the future of the nation.”

Sergei Lavrov accuses west of using Ukraine ‘to defeat’ Russia days after Putin shifts Moscow’s nuclear posture

Russia’s top diplomat warned on Saturday against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power”, delivering a UN general assembly speech packed with condemnations of what Russia sees as western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere – including inside the United Nations itself.

Three days after Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, aired a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine, his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the west of using Ukraine – which Russia invaded in February 2022 – as a tool to try “to defeat” Moscow strategically, and “preparing Europe for it to also throw itself into this suicidal escapade”.

“I’m not going to talk here about the senselessness and the danger of the very idea of trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is,” he said.

A British clergyman died after a night of sex and drugs with a Belgian priest who has since been arrested on drug-related charges, Belgian authorities said on Saturday.

The 69-year-old, who has not been named, was spending the evening with his fellow cleric, 60, at a clergy house in Kalmthout north of Antwerp on Thursday when he became unwell, the prosecutor office said.

Shortly after midnight, the Belgian priest called the emergency services, who could not resuscitate his companion.

"It appears that the two men had used ecstasy and poppers together and had had sex. Two ecstasy pills were also found," the prosecutor's office said.

Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022

Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.

Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.

The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.

Staunch libertarian Javier Milei has implemented a range of austerity measures since taking office. His government blamed previous administrations for the dire economic situation.

The poverty rate in Argentina reached 52.9% during the first six months of Javier Milei’s government, the national statistics agency reported on Thursday.

It marks the highest poverty rate since 2003, and a 11.2% increase compared to the second half of 2023.

The number of people living in extreme poverty grew by 3 million during the first half of 2024, according to the report.

The statistics agency calculates poverty by comparing household income with the cost of a basic basket of goods, which amounts to around $240 (€215).

According to The Atlantic, Blinken enquired whether the Saudis could tolerate Israel periodically re-entering the territory to strike the besieged Gaza Strip.

“They can come back in six months, a year, but not on the back end of my signing something like this,” Mohammed bin Salman responded.

“Seventy percent of my population is younger than me,” the crown prince explained to Blinken.

“For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.”

Austrians vote on Sunday in a general election that could see the far-right opposition Freedom Party (FPÖ) top the polls for the first time.

Five years ago, the party crashed out of a coalition government with the conservative People’s Party because of a corruption scandal dubbed Ibiza-gate.

But now, led by Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ is within reach of a historic victory. It narrowly leads the ruling conservatives in the opinion polls, and the opposition Social Democrats are in third place.

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The FPÖ has successfully tapped into concerns about migration, rising inflation, the war in Ukraine and anger over the way the Covid pandemic was handled, and for months has been hovering around 27% in the polls, up to two points ahead of the conservative Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) or Austrian People's Party, which is predicting a photo finish.

The cocaine was hidden in banana boxes stacked inside a shipping container near Hamburg's port. Police said the drug haul was the result of weeks of undercover investigation.

Police in the port city of Hamburg have made several arrests after seizing more than two tons of cocaine.

Authorities estimate the drugs have a street value of around €100 million ($112 million).

"This is an outstanding success and one of the largest seizures in an ongoing operation," Hamburg's Interior Minister Andy Grote said.

Police said they found the cocaine on Wednesday afternoon when they searched a shipping container in the district of Rothenburgsort, near Hamburg's port. Inside, they allegedly found the cocaine hidden in banana boxes.

The UN's refugee agency says one of its staff members and one of her children were killed in an Israeli air strike in eastern Lebanon - one of well over a thousand such strikes over the past two days.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday expressed strong concerns about China's support for Russia's defense industry and questioned Beijing's sincerity in seeking peace in Ukraine.

He met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday.

"When Beijing says that, on the one hand, that it wants peace, it wants to see an end to the conflict, but on the other hand is allowing its companies to take actions that are actually helping Putin continue the aggression, that doesn't add up," Blinken said at a media briefing.

Beijing said it has not supplied Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine.

Blinken, however, said China has provided about 70% of machine tools and 90% of microelectronics that Moscow needs for military production, including rockets and armored vehicles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cut off former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during a gaggle with reporters on Friday, musing that he hoped Trump had a better relationship with himself than Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

The awkward moment came after Trump was asked about his expectations for his private meeting with Zelensky.

A top aide to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has drawn criticism for suggesting that his country would not have resisted a Russian invasion like Ukraine did, multiple reports said.

Balázs Orbán, the prime minister's highly influential political director, made the remarks on the podcast of a conservative Hungarian news magazine.

Balázs Orbán, who is also an MP, is not related to Viktor Orbán.

"We probably would not have done what President Zelenskyy did two and a half years ago, because it is irresponsible, because one can see that he took his country into a war of defense," Balázs Orbán said, the Hungarian outlet Telex reported.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240928002535/https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/nato-to-set-up-northern-land-command-in-eastern-finland

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Hundreds of LGBTQ+ people and their supporters rallied in Nepal’s capital Tuesday during the annual Pride parade, the first since gay couples were able to register same-sex marriages officially in the Himalayan nation following a Supreme Court order in Nov 2023.

The annual event brings together the sexual minority community and their supporters in Kathmandu during the Gai Jatra festival.

Tuesday’s rally was participated by a government minister, diplomats and officials, which began at the city’s tourist hub and went around its main streets.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3233057

> China's latest nuclear submarine sank during its construction earlier this year, senior US defense officials said on Thursday. > > Satellite images from June showed cranes at the Wuchang shipyard where the Zhou-class attack submarine would have been docked. > > These images indicate that the vessel likely sank between May and June, US officials told news agencies including the Associated Press and Reuters. > > China has not confirmed the current status of the submarine. > > Reports of a submarine sinking during construction could be a potential setback for China as it continues to expand its naval capacity. > > "We are not familiar with the situation you mentioned and currently have no information to provide," a Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington said. > > A US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters it was "not surprising" that China's navy would hide the sinking of the submarine. > > "In addition to the obvious questions about training standards and equipment quality, the incident raises deeper questions about the PLA's internal accountability and oversight of China's defense industry — which has long been plagued by corruption," they added, using the acronym for the People's Liberation Army.

LAJAS BLANCAS, Panama (AP) — Venezuelans trekking across the Darien Gap – a rugged jungle passage between Colombia and Panama – say they’re making the perilous journey because they lost hope for change after a contentious presidential election handed victory to President Nicolás Maduro despite vote tallies released by the opposition showing that his competitor won by a landslide.

“We stayed waiting for the election (results) because if Maduro left (power) then we would stay. But nothing happened,” said Enrique Dordis, 46, a former cab driver from the central state of Carabobo, who left Venezuela last week with his wife, an 8-year-old son, Emanuel, and four other family members.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3235819

> Archived link > > Openly defending one’s decision not to have children will be prosecuted in Russia. The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, is preparing a bill under which authorities will impose fines of up to €50,000 ($55,580) for supporting “the refusal to have children.” The measure affects all areas of life — from casual conversation to films and books — and is a serious threat to the Russian feminist movement. > > The crackdown on what the Kremlin calls the “childfree” movement will result in fines of up to 400,000 rubles for individuals (around $4,300), 800,000 rubles for civil servants ($8,600), and up to five million rubles ($55,580) for companies or other legal entities. Foreigners will also be deported. > > There are thousands of reasons why a person may decide not to have children, but the Cabinet of ministers has asked the State Duma to make only three exceptions to the law: religious reasons, medical reasons or in the case of rape. It also alleges that there is a mass-organized childfree movement, even though the websites on this subject are little more than a curiosity; Russian newspapers cite the existence of groups on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, which barely have 5,000 members. > > [...]

Israel's prime minister indicated that he "did not even respond" to proposals aimed at bringing about a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, as Israeli forces continued raining down air strikes on Lebanon.

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron published a joint statement calling for a 21-day truce, aimed at paving the way for broader negotiations for a permanent ceasefire.

Just hours later, however, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office rejected the idea.

"The news about a ceasefire - not true. This is an American-French proposal, to which the prime minister did not even respond," his office said.

"The prime minister instructed the [Israeli army] to continue the fighting with full force, and according to the plans presented to them," it said, adding that hostilities would continue in Gaza too.

The boss of a Tesla factory has defended the decision to send managers to the homes of workers on long-term sick leave.

In recent weeks, a director of Tesla’s electric car plant in Germany sent managers to check up on about two dozen employees who have continued to be paid while being on sick leave over the past nine months.

André Thierig, the plant’s manufacturing director, said the home visits were common practice in the industry and that the company simply wanted to “appeal to the employees’ work ethic”.

The move by Elon Musk’s US-headquartered carmaker has sparked outrage at the trade union IG Metall, which represents a proportion of the 12,000 workers at the Berlin-Brandenburg gigafactory.

Chinese naval and air forces have held maneuvers in a disputed part of the South China Sea. The drills came shortly after high-level talks between Beijing and Washington about relieving regional tensions in the area.

Chinese ships and planes on Saturday conducted patrols around the flashpoint Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea as Beijing continues to assert its claims to almost the entire waterway against the will of several other countries in the region.

The maneuvers come after several tense maritime confrontations, particularly with the Philippines, in recent months. It also coincided with joint exercises carried out by the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines in Manila's exclusive economic zone.

They also follow talks between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in New York on ways to reduce tensions in the region.

Meta was punished Friday with a fine worth more than $100 million from the social media giant's European Union privacy regulator over a security lapse involving passwords for Facebook users.

The Irish Data Protection Commission said it slapped the U.S. tech company with the 91 million euro ($101.6 million) penalty following an investigation.

The watchdog started investigating in 2019 after it was notified by Meta that some passwords had been inadvertently stored internally in plain text, which means they weren't encrypted and it was possible for employees to search for them.

Tree’s resin, called ’tsori’ in Biblical texts, was highly prized in ancient world for its used in perfume, incense, cataract medicine, embalming agents, and antidotes

The resin of a tree grown from an ancient seed found in a desert cave near Jerusalem could be the source of a medicinal balm mentioned in the Bible, a new study has found.

The strange seed, about 2cm long, was discovered in a Judean Desert cave in the late 1980s, and dated to between 993AD and 1202AD. After years of attempting to grow the plant, researchers have identified the sapling nicknamed “Sheba”.

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Researchers suspected the “Sheba” tree to be a candidate for the “Judean Balsam” or “Balm of Judea”, which was cultivated exclusively in the desert region of southern Levant during Biblical times.

The Judean Balsam has been extensively described in the literature from Hellenistic, Roman-Byzantine and Post-Classical periods between the 4th century BC and the 8th century AD.

https://archive.ph/WDQT9

Immunologists push for increase in testing and more widespread vaccine booster rollout as new variant, XEC, emerges

Covid is on the rise in England, and experts have warned that more must be done to prevent and control infections after a "capitulation to the virus".

Prof Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, said those working in the field were perplexed by the current attitude to the battle against Covid, as the latest figures showed an increase in hospital admissions.

The latest data for England from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) showed that hospital admissions increased to 3.71 per 100,000 population for the week between 16 and 22 September 2024, compared with 2.56 per 100,000 the previous week.

The percentage of people with symptoms who have tested positive for Covid, based on tests at sentinel "spotter" laboratories, has also risen in the last week to 11.8% compared with 9.1% in the previous week.

More and more young Germans support the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. It capitalizes on their pessimistic outlook and disappointment with other parties, experts say.

When the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was founded in 2013, it had the reputation of an old man's club: gray hair, suits, professors, businessmen from the baby boomer generation. It seemed to be composed mostly of men dissatisfied with the fiscal and foreign policies of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Eleven years later, hardly any of that political landscape remains. Merkel is no longer chancellor, and the AfD has changed dramatically. It has become more radical, but it has also become much younger. And this became increasingly clear during the European Parliament election and a trio of state elections that took place in eastern Germany in 2024.

The anti-immigration party campaigned heavily for the votes of young people. For example, in the eastern state of Thuringia, AfD state chairman Björn Höcke organized a motorcycle rally at the end of the election campaign. His supporters rattled through towns and villages on smoky and smelly two-wheelers made by Simson, a motorcycle manufactured in the former East Germany that is now popular among young people. The rally was accompanied by a professionally coordinated campaign on TikTok, Instagram and other social media, and drew the attention of most of the country's traditional media as well.