The US military routinely carries out flights over international waters, operations that it says are conducted in neutral airspace and in accordance with international law.

But Moscow has responded more aggressively to the exercises in recent months, warning in June that US drone flights over the Black Sea risked leading to a “direct” military clash.

The Russian defence ministry said it had scrambled fighter jets to intercept an “air target approaching the state border of the Russian Federation”.

“The crews of the Russian fighters identified the aerial target as a pair of US Air Force B-52H strategic bombers,” it said.

“As the Russian fighters approached, the American strategic bombers corrected their flight course, moving away and then turning away from Russia’s state border,” it said.

In June, Moscow accused the United States of using its reconnaissance drone flights over neutral waters in the Black Sea to help Ukraine strike the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.

It said that the flights increased the risk of a “direct confrontation” between NATO and Russia, and that its army had been instructed to prepare an “operational response”.

The 50-year-old has seen his half-hectare of cactus crops wither as the invasive insect wreaked havoc on about a third of the country’s cacti after an outbreak in 2021.

“At first, I wanted to experiment with prickly pear production and gradually develop investments while looking for customers outside the country, especially for its natural oil,” said Nouira.

“But… as the cacti became damaged, I abandoned the idea of investing and stopped thinking about it altogether.”

Prickly pear is consumed as food and used to make oils, cosmetics and body-care products.

In Chebika, as in other rural areas in central Tunisia, many farmers’ fields of prickly pear — also known as Opuntia — have been spoiled by the cochineal, which swept through North Africa 10 years ago, beginning in Morocco.

The insect, like the prickly pear, is native to the Americas and feeds on the plant’s nutrients and fluids, often killing it.

The infestations have resulted in significant economic losses for thousands of farmers reliant on prickly pear, as authorities struggle to combat the epidemic in a country where its fruit is widely consumed as a summertime snack.

– Livelihood –

Tunisian authorities estimate that about 150,000 families make a living from cultivating Opuntia.

The North African country is the world’s second-largest producer of its fruit, after Mexico, with about 600,000 hectares of crops and a yield of about 550,000 tonnes per year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Only production allocated for export — about a third of overall crops — has remained in good condition, said Rabeh Hajlaoui, head of the department of plant health at Tunisia’s agriculture ministry.

“We’re making every effort to save these plants, which are an important source of income to some locals,” he explained, as one litre of extracted Opuntia oil can be sold for as much as $4,200.

Farmers also plant prickly pear cacti for their resistance to drought and desertification, and sometimes use them to demarcate and fence property in Tunisia and neighbouring Libya.

In Morocco, where the first cases of cochineal were found in 2014, Opuntia is cultivated over a total of 160,000 hectares.

In 2016, the Moroccan government issued an “emergency plan” to combat cochineal infestation by experimenting with various chemicals, burying infected cacti and conducting research on developing variants resilient to the insect.

Despite the plan, by August 2022, about 75 percent of Opuntia crops in Morocco had been infested, according to Mohamed Sbaghi, a professor at Rabat’s National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA) and the emergency plan coordinator.

In neighbouring Algeria, authorities recorded an outbreak in 2021 in Tlemcen, a city near the border with Morocco.

Prickly pear cultivation in the country covers around 60,000 hectares, and the fruit is so cherished that a festival dedicated to it is held every year in the eastern Kabylia region.

– ‘Public safety’ –

Neither the plant nor cochineal is native to North Africa, but the region’s dry climate helped them spread, said Tunisian entomologist Brahim Chermiti.

“Climate change, with increasing drought and high temperatures, facilitates their reproduction,” he told AFP.

The region has experienced severe drought in recent years, with declining rainfall and intense heat.

Chermiti believes it’s a matter of “public safety” to combat cochineal infestation, requiring “strict border crossing monitoring and public awareness”.

The researcher fears total contagion, as “sooner or later, it will spread, with the help of many factors such as the wind and livestock”.

Hajlaoui, from Tunisia’s agriculture ministry, said the issue could even cause social unrest if it spreads to farms in marginalised areas, such as Tunisia’s Kasserine governorate, where Opuntia is nearly the only source of livelihood for many.

He said the “slowness of administrative procedure” during the first major outbreaks in Tunisia impeded efforts to stem the spread of cochineal.

At first, Morocco and Tunisia burned and uprooted infected crops, but authorities now aim for “natural resistance” to the insect, said Hajlaoui.

Last summer, Morocco’s INRA said it identified eight cochineal-resistant Opuntia varieties that could potentially be cultivated.

The other solution, added the expert, is spreading the Hyperaspis trifurcata ladybird — also native to the Americas — among the cacti, which preys on cochineal.

In Morocco, farmers began raising the ladybird “so that it is always ready” in case of outbreaks, said Aissa Derhem, head of the environmental association Dar Si Hmad.

Last month, Tunisia received 100 ladybirds along with an emergency budget of $500,000 to battle cochineal, allocated by the FAO.

Despite Washington’s top diplomat asserting a deal is near the “goal line” to end more than nine months of devastating war between Israel and Gaza rulers Hamas, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, as it pressed on with its offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Dozens have been killed since Saturday across the Gaza Strip, the civil defence agency said, including in strikes on homes in the central Nuseirat and Bureij areas and displaced people near southern Khan Yunis.

Residents said a major operation was underway in the Saudi district of Rafah in the south, reporting heavy artillery and clashes.

The deadly strikes in Gaza came hours after Hezbollah and its ally Hamas said they fired at Israeli positions from south Lebanon, while Yemen’s Huthi rebels vowed to respond to Israeli warplanes hitting a key port.

The fire left raging by the strikes on rebel-held Hodeida port “is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said.

Detailing the first strikes claimed by Israel in Yemen, Gallant warned of further operations if the Huthis “dare to attack us” after a rebel drone strike killed one in Tel Aviv on Friday.

In Hodeida three people were killed and 87 wounded, health officials said in a statement carried by Huthi media.

– Netanyahu travels to Washington –

The trio of militant groups has vowed to keep up attacks on Israel until a truce ends the violence in Gaza, which lies in ruins, with most residents forced to flee their homes.

The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 42 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s military retaliation to wipe out Hamas has killed at least 38,919 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The war has also unleashed hunger and health crises in Gaza, with Israel and the United Nations trading blame for vital aid supplies failing to reach those in need.

After the detection of poliovirus in Gaza sewage, though no individual cases, the World Health Organization said there were “monumental” constraints to mounting a timely response. 

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said Friday the agency believes many more diseases are “spreading out of control” inside Gaza.

The months-long war has also brought Israelis to the streets, sometimes in their tens of thousands, focused on securing the release of the remaining hostages.

“Bring them home,” demonstrator Ofira Azrieli said Saturday in Tel Aviv, appealing to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The premier is due to address US lawmakers Wednesday in Washington, where he will be under pressure to reach a ceasefire with Hamas.

“He doesn’t have to go there. First, you have to sign the deal and after, go to Washington,” Azrieli, 64, told AFP.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday a truce was within reach.

“I believe we’re… driving toward the goal line in getting an agreement that would produce a ceasefire, get the hostages home, and put us on a better track to trying to build lasting peace and stability,” he said.

Saturday’s strike on the vital port, a key entry point for fuel and humanitarian aid, is the first claimed by Israel in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country, about 2,000 kilometres (1,300 miles) away.

It killed three people and wounded 87, many of them with severe burns, the rebel-run health ministry said in a statement carried by Huthi media.

On Sunday, Huthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the rebels’ “response to the Israeli aggression against our country is inevitably coming and will be huge”.

Israel said it carried out the strike in response to a drone attack by the Huthis on Tel Aviv which killed one person on Friday.

More operations against the Huthis would follow “if they dare to attack us”, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said.

Following the strike, the Israeli military said Sunday it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen towards the Red Sea resort town of Eilat, noting that “the projectile did not cross into Israeli territory”.

Saree, the Huthi spokesman, said the rebels had fired ballistic missiles towards Eilat, the latest in a string of Huthi attempts to hit the port city.

The rebel announcement came as firefighters struggled to contain the blaze at the Hodeida port, with thick plumes of black smoke shrouding the sky above the city, said an AFP correspondent in the area.

Fuel storage tanks and a power plant at the port where still ablaze amid “slow” firefighting efforts, said a Hodeida port employee.

The port employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security concerns, said it could take days to contain the fire, a view echoed by Yemen experts.

“There is concern that the poorly equipped firefighters may not be able to contain the spreading fire, which could continue for days,” said  Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group, warning that it could reach food storage facilities at the harbour.

‘Dire humanitarian effects’ –

Hodeida port, a vital entry point for fuel imports and international aid for rebel-held areas of Yemen, had remained largely untouched through the decade-long war between the Huthis and the internationally recognised government propped up by neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

The Huthis control swathes of Yemen, including much of its Red Sea coast, and the war has left millions of Yemenis dependent on aid supplied through the port.

Despite Huthi assurances of sufficient fuel stocks, Saturday’s strike triggered fears of worsening shortages, which war-weary Yemenis are ill-equiped to handle.

The attack is “going to have dire humanitarian effects on the millions of ordinary Yemenis living in Huthi-held Yemen,” Nicholas Brumfield, a Yemen expert, said on social media platform X.

It will drive up prices of fuel but also any goods carried by truck, the analyst said.

Yemen’s internationally-recognised government, which has been battling the Huthis for nearly a decade, condemned the strike, and held Israel responsible for a worsening humanitarian crisis.

A statement carried by the official Saba news agency said the Yemeni government holds “the Zionist entity fully responsible for any repercussions resulting from its air strikes, including the deepening of a humanitarian crises”.

It also warned the Huthi rebels against dragging the country into “senseless battles that serve the interests of the Iranian regime and its expansionist project in the region”.

The questioning comes as the opposition calls for a special probe into the first lady, who has been under scrutiny for accepting a Dior bag in violation of government ethics rules, and for her alleged role in a stock manipulation scheme.

Prosecutors conducted “face-to-face questioning” of Kim on Saturday, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. 

Hidden camera footage released last year appeared to show Kim accepting a $2,200 luxury designer handbag, an act that was later dubbed the “Dior bag scandal” by local papers. 

The scandal hit President Yoon Suk Yeol’s already-low approval ratings, contributing to a stinging defeat for his party in general elections in April as it failed to win back a parliamentary majority.

Such a gift would violate South Korean law, which bans public officials and their spouses from accepting anything worth more than $750. 

Kim’s aide told investigators earlier this month that the first lady told her to return the bag on the same day she had received it, but she had forgotten to, according to Yonhap news agency. 

In his first remarks on the bag scandal in February, Yoon dismissed it as a “political scheme” and said his wife had accepted the bag only because it was difficult for her to refuse it. 

But he later apologised in a rare press conference in May, describing his wife’s acceptance of the bag as “unwise”. 

It is not the first time Kim has faced public scrutiny. During Yoon’s presidential campaign, she was forced to apologise over falsified credentials.

What began as a protest against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs snowballed this week into some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.

Soldiers were patrolling cities across Bangladesh after riot police failed to restore order, while a nationwide internet blackout since Thursday has drastically restricted the flow of information to the outside world.

The Supreme Court was in session on Sunday ahead of an expected verdict on whether to abolish the contentious job quotas.

Hasina, whose opponents accuse her government of bending the judiciary to her will, hinted to the public this week that the scheme would be scrapped. 

But after the mounting crackdown and a rising death toll, a favourable verdict is unlikely to mollify white-hot public anger. 

“It’s not about the rights of the students anymore,” business owner Hasibul Sheikh, 24, told AFP at the scene of a Saturday street protest, held in the capital Dhaka in defiance of a nationwide curfew.

“Our demand is one point now, and that’s the resignation of the government.”

The catalyst for this month’s unrest is a system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Critics say the scheme benefits families loyal to Hasina, 76, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Hasina’s government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

– ‘Made the situation worse’ –

With Bangladesh unable to provide adequate employment opportunities for its 170 million people, the quota scheme is a pronounced source of resentment among young graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Hasina inflamed tensions this month by likening protesters to the Bangladeshis who had collaborated with Pakistan during the country’s 1971 independence war.

“Rather than try to address the protesters’ grievances, the government’s actions have made the situation worse,” Crisis Group’s Asia director Pierre Prakash told AFP. 

Hasina had been due to leave the country on Sunday for a diplomatic tour to Spain and Brazil but abandoned her plans after a week of escalating violence.

Since Tuesday at least 151 people, including several police officers, have been killed in clashes around the country, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals.

– Curfew extended –

Police have arrested several members of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Students Against Discrimination, the main protest organising group.

Bangladesh home minister Asaduzzaman Khan told AFP that the curfew imposed on Saturday would continue “until the situation improves”. 

He said that in addition to the torching of government buildings and police posts by protesters, arson attacks had left Dhaka’s metro rail network inoperable.

“They are carrying out destructive activities targeting the government,” Khan said, blaming the BNP and the Islamist party Jamaat for stoking the violence.

On Friday a crowd of thousands besieged a prison in the central district of Narsingdi armed with machetes and steel rods, freeing more than 800 prisoners before setting part of the facility ablaze.

“They set fire to three barracks in the jail including a two-floor building,” the jail’s warden Mohammad Abul Kalam Azad told AFP. “They freed the inmates. We took refuge in our homes. Some of us were injured.”

The US State Department warned Americans on Saturday not to travel to Bangladesh and said it would begin removing some diplomats and their families from the country due to the civil unrest.

Ankara initially sought to topple Damascus after the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests, and Erdogan branded Assad a “murderer”.

As Damascus regained territory, however, Erdogan reversed course. Since 2022, top Syrian and Turkish officials have met for Russia-mediated talks, with Moscow pushing for a detente.

Erdogan said this month he could invite Assad to Turkey “at any moment”, while Assad said any meeting would depend on the “content”.

Mona Yacoubian, vice president of the Middle East and North Africa centre at the United States Institute of Peace, said any normalisation “is not going to happen overnight… even if there’s an Assad-Erdogan meeting”.

Given the complexities, she said, “this will be a very gradual and drawn-out process”.

But “even the semblance” of normalisation “is something that Erdogan is looking for”, she added.

Since the war began, Syrians including opposition figures have flooded into Turkey, which now hosts about 3.2 million refugees.

Anti-Syrian sentiment and economic woes have piled pressure on Erdogan for their return.

“Syria and the Syrian refugees have become a massive liability for Erdogan,” said Aaron Stein, president of the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“Ankara’s investment in the Syrian opposition, from a military standpoint, is a complete failure,” he added.

– ‘Takes two to tango’ –

A Turkish defence ministry source said Thursday that “Turkey is in Syria to eliminate terrorist attacks and threats against its territory… and to prevent the establishment of a terrorist corridor in northern Syria as a fait accompli”, referring to Kurdish forces.

Turkish troops and Turkey-backed rebel factions control swathes of northern Syria, and Ankara has launched successive cross-border offensives since 2016, mainly to clear the area of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Assad said this week he was open to meeting Erdogan but noted “support for terrorism, and the withdrawal from Syrian territory” of Turkish troops were the “essence of the problem”.

According to Stein, if Erdogan says an encounter with Assad is possible, it may happen.

“But in this process, it takes two to tango, and his dance partner is a murderer who hates him,” he said.

The US-backed, Kurdish-led SDF spearheaded the battle that dislodged Islamic State group jihadists from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019. The Kurds have established a semi-autonomous administration spanning swathes of the north and northeast.

Assad accuses the Kurdish administration of “separatism” and views US forces in SDF-held territory as an “occupation”.

Turkey sees the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it considers a “terrorist” group.

Any Syria-Turkey rapprochement raises serious concerns for the Kurds, who risk seeing hard-fought gains during years of war wiped out.

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, said Ankara “wants Assad to snuff out the PKK so the organisation will go dormant”.

This would start “the real normalisation in the northwest, with Turkey gradually committing to withdraw troops”, he said.

– ‘Tricky part’ –

A transitional arrangement could see Erdogan recognise Assad’s authority in northern Syria while keeping security “in Ankara’s hands”, with Turkey’s eventual goal being to repatriate Syrian refugees there, he said.

But “the tricky part” is that many civilians in Turkish-controlled areas of Syria do not want to live under Assad and could turn against Ankara, Cagaptay added.

North and northwest Syria have seen anti-Turkish protests in recent weeks and witnessed demonstrations in 2022 when ties began to thaw.

In the Kurdish-controlled northeast, Stein noted the US presence would make any Syrian-enabled Turkish offensive against PKK-linked groups more challenging.

“The one tool available is the Adana Agreement… which sanctions Turkish operations within a few kilometres of the border,” Stein said.

Under the 1998 accord, Damascus agreed to withhold support for the PKK and to expel its fighters from Syrian soil after Turkey threatened military action.

Yacoubian said it remained to be seen whether the Adana agreement could be “repurposed” now, with the Kurds controlling large swathes of territory.

Moves towards normalisation could “be in anticipation of a potential shift in American policy” concerning Syria and troops there, she noted, with US elections on the horizon.

Here are five takeaways from the vision painted by the Republican presidential nominee for the United States:

– ‘Shoveling ballots into wheelbarrows’ –

Last week’s Republican National Convention notably downplayed Trump’s persistent lie that the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, was stolen from him.

But when Trump returned to the campaign trail Saturday night he did not hold back. 

“The Radical Left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020 and we’re not going to allow them to rig the presidential election in 2024,” he said, in just one of his references to voter fraud.

“We want a landslide that is too big to rig,” he added later.

He warned those who voted early to “follow your vote” and insisted that 2020 saw some states “shoveling ballots into wheelbarrows, moving them around.”

And the crowd cheered as he called on them to “Fight, fight, fight.”

That evoked both the moments after his attempted assassination last Saturday — when, bloodied and surrounded by Secret Service agents, he raised a fist in the air and shouted “fight” — and his comments before the 2021 Capitol riot, when he warned supporters “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

– ‘I’m not an extremist at all’ –

Trump also again disavowed Project 2025, a shadow manifesto characterized by opponents as an authoritarian, right-wing wish list.

“The other side is going around trying to make me sound extreme … I’m not an extremist at all,” he complained.

The sweeping blueprint from the hardline Heritage Foundation to remake the federal government in Trump’s image was created by “the radical right… they’re seriously extreme,” he said, insisting “I don’t know what the hell it is.”

The official Republican platform ratified at the Milwaukee convention is less conservative than Project 2025 in several areas, including abortion and entitlements.

But many of the more extreme proposals in the Heritage Foundation handbook are indistinguishable from Trump’s remarks at his rallies and his own video statements, while Democrats say members of his inner circle have been linked to it. 

Still Trump insisted the idea that he is a “threat to democracy” is “misinformation.”

“Last week, I took a bullet for democracy,” he said.

– ‘Stupid’ Biden –

Trump also laid in to the crisis engulfing rival Biden’s candidacy, as Democrats fearing that at 81 the president is too old to serve for another four years pressure him to step off the ticket. 

“They have no idea who they candidate is … Sort of interesting, this guy goes and he gets the votes and now they want to take it away. That’s democracy,” Trump said in Michigan. 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he said, had turned on the president “like a dog.”

Branding Biden “stupid” and “a low-IQ individual,” he also denigrated Vice President Kamala Harris — who, if the president steps aside, is in a strong position to take over — as “crazy.”

– ‘Beautiful’ note from Xi – 

Trump again touted his relationships with autocrats around the globe, insisting of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un that getting along had made the United States safer.

“All he wants to do is buy nuclear weapons and make them,” he said of Kim.

“I said, just relax, chill. You’ve got enough. You got, you got so much nuclear weapons, so much, I said, just relax… let’s go to a baseball game.”

He called Hungarian President Viktor Orban a “very powerful leader” and again insisted that, had he been US leader, President Vladimir Putin of Russia would never have invaded Ukraine in 2022. 

And he said he received a “beautiful note” after the assassination attempt from President Xi Jinping of China, calling him a “great guy.”

He said he had told reporters that Xi was “a brilliant man. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”

– ‘Migrant crime’ –

Trump also unleashed a litany of threats against illegal migrants, decrying an “invasion” over the US border and again suggesting that Democrats were allowing it to happen in hope of using their votes.

On day one of his return to the Oval Office, he promised to launch “largest deportation operation in the history of our country.

“When I return to the White House, we will stop the plunder, rape, slaughter and destruction of our American suburb cities,” he continued. 

“We’re going to get the bad ones out. We’re going to get them out immediately. It’s not going to take long.”

He promised to “crush migrant crime” and complained that countries such as Venezuela are “dumping their criminals into the United States of America, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

Over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two decades in power, Ankara has consolidated its foothold on the continent, quadrupling its number of embassies there.

Here are five of Turkey’s diplomatic and economic interests and strategies in Africa:

‘Alternative to the West’ –

At a time when many African countries are turning away from their former colonial rulers, Turkey has looked to fill the void left behind.

“Erdogan presents himself as an alternative to the West,” said Selin Gucum, author of a study on Turkish interests in Africa for Paris’s Observatory of Contemporary Turkey.

Gucum told AFP that Ankara often emphasises the “sincerity” of its presence on the continent compared to that of Europeans, who bear the legacy of colonialism.

And Erdogan can be less squeamish about what partners he chooses, according to a report on Turkey’s defence accords with African countries by Teresa Nogueira Pinto, an analyst at Geopolitical Intelligence Services.

“Unlike the West, Turkey does not make this assistance conditional on governance or human rights commitments,” Pinto wrote.

Defence and security –

Turkey has signed defence agreements with a number of states spanning the breadth of the continent, including Somalia, Libya, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Ghana.

Those agreements have opened up contracts for Turkey’s defence manufacturers, notably for its reputedly reliable and inexpensive drones.

Popularly used in the fight against terrorism, Turkish drones have been recently delivered to Chad, Togo, and the junta-led Sahel trio of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

Fossil fuels and nuclear –

Turkey is also expanding its interests in Africa’s energy sector.

In September or October it plans to launch an oil and gas exploration mission off the coast of Somalia, similar to the one it is carrying out in Libyan waters.

Ankara is also said to be coveting Niger’s abundant uranium deposits which it needs to operate its future Russian-built Akkuyu nuclear power station — although Ankara’s diplomats deny this.

Nonetheless, Erdogan has bolstered ties with Niger’s ruling generals since their 2023 coup d’etat. Niamey received Turkey’s intelligence chief and foreign, energy and defence ministers on Wednesday.

Infrastructure and construction –

Ankara is generally seen as a “reliable partner”, said Didier Billion, Turkey specialist at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs — “particularly in the construction and infrastructure sectors”.

When Turkish companies build big-ticket projects like hospitals, airports, or mosques, “deadlines and budgets are met, he added.

That reputation means more demand: in 2023, Turkish contractors were involved in $85.5 billion worth of projects, according to the trade ministry.

Turkish Airlines also crisscrosses the continent, flying to 62 destinations in Africa.

In 2012, it became the first airline to return to Mogadishu, whose airport was rebuilt with Turkish funding and assistance.

Religion, schools and television –

Turkey has accumulated considerable soft power in the region, notably through education, the media and its shared religion with Africa’s many Muslim countries.

The religious Turkish Maarif Foundation has expanded to a network of 140 schools and institutions catering for 17,000 pupils, while 60,000 Africans are students in Turkey.

Ankara’s powerful Directorate of Religious Affairs has stepped up its humanitarian activities and support for mosques and religious education across the region.

Billing itself as the first Turkish television channel on the continent, NRT boasts on its website that it serves 49 African countries, spreading the Turkish language.

Public broadcaster TRT also has programmes in French, English, Swahili and Hausa and is developing training courses for future journalists.

Turkey’s religious conservatism likewise resonates with many African countries, at a time when anti-LGBTQ laws are being adopted on the continent.

“When Erdogan denounces ‘LGBTQ people who undermine family values’, for many Africans, that’s music to their ears,” Billion said.

The strikes on the vital port, which triggered a raging fire and plumes of black smoke, are the first claimed by Israel in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country, about 2,000 kilometres (1,300 miles) away, analysts said.

“The blood of Israeli citizens has a price,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, adding more operations against the Huthis would follow “if they dare to attack us”.

Gallant said the Hodeida strikes were also a warning to other Iran-backed armed groups around the Middle East that have claimed attacks on Israel during the Gaza war.

“The fire that is currently burning in Hodeida, is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear,” he said.

The Israeli strikes killed three people and wounded 87, the rebel-run health ministry said in a statement carried by Huthi media.

The ministry said earlier that most of the wounded had severe burns.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned “anyone who harms us will pay a very heavy price”, after Friday’s drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian.

But Huthi politburo member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti swiftly threatened to “meet escalation with escalation”, in a social media post. 

Israel’s military said Sunday it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, the latest in a series of Huthi weapons downed off the Red Sea resort town of Eilat in recent months.

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari on Saturday accused the Huthis of using Hodeida “as a main supply route for the transfer of Iranian weapons” such as the drone which hit Tel Aviv.

– ‘Brutal aggression’ –

In a statement on social media, top Huthi official Mohammed Abdulsalam reported a “brutal Israel aggression against Yemen”.

The attack targeted “fuel storage facilities and a power plant” in Hodeida “to pressure Yemen to stop supporting” Palestinians in the Gaza war, he said.

An AFP correspondent in Hodeida reported hearing several large explosions and seeing smoke over the port.

Footage aired by the rebels’ Al-Masirah television, which AFP could not independently verify, showed casualties being treated in hospital, many of them bandaged and lying on stretchers in packed rooms.  

A man interviewed by the broadcaster said many of the wounded were port employees. 

“The city is dark, people are on the streets, petrol stations are closed and seeing long queues,” said a Hodeida resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing safety concerns.

The oil ministry sought to reassure Yemenis that there are “large and sufficient amounts of oil reserves” in a statement published by the Huthi-run Saba news agency.

Maritime security firm Ambrey said it observed four merchant vessels in the port at the time of the air strike and another eight in the anchorage. 

“No damage to merchant vessels has been reported at this time,” it said.

– Yemen aid lifeline fears –

The United States, which along with Britain has carried out several rounds of air strikes against the Huthis in an attempt to put an end to their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, said it played no part in Saturday’s strikes.

“The United States was not involved in today’s strikes in Yemen, and we did not coordinate or assist Israel with the strikes,” a US National Security Council spokesman said.

Separately, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said Saturday it “successfully destroyed” a Huthi drone during the past 24 hours over the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia distanced itself from the Yemen strikes, with a defence ministry spokesman saying Riyadh had “no links to or involvement in targeting Hodeida”.

“The kingdom will not allow its airspace to be infiltrated by any party,” said Brigadier General Turki al-Maliki.

Hodeida port, a vital entry point for imports and international aid for rebel-held areas of Yemen, had remained largely untouched through the decade-long war between the Huthis and the internationally recognised government propped up by neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

The Huthis control swathes of Yemen, including much of its Red Sea coast, and the war has left millions of Yemenis dependent on aid supplied through the port.

“Traders now fear that this will exacerbate the already critical food security and humanitarian situation in northern Yemen, as the majority of trade flows through this port,” said Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group.

UN chief Antonio Guterres had appealed for “maximum restraint” after the Tel Aviv drone strike to avoid “further escalation in the region”.

The Huthis’ Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, warned that the Israeli strikes on Hodeida marked a dangerous turn nine months into the Gaza war.

“The foolish step taken by the Zionist enemy heralds a new, dangerous phase,” said the group, which has exchanged nearly daily fire with the Israeli army throughout the war.

Analysts at Wedbush Securities, one of Wall Street’s biggest believers in AI’s potential, expect “growth and earnings to accelerate with the AI revolution and the wave of transformation” it is causing.

The market generally agrees with this rosy AI narrative. Analysts forecast double-digit growth for heavyweights Microsoft and Google, in contrast to Apple, a latecomer to the AI party, with only three percent growth expected.

The iPhone maker, which releases its results on August 1, unveiled its new Apple Intelligence system only last month and plans to roll it out gradually over the next months, and only on the latest models.

CFRA analyst Angelo Zino believes that the impact of these new features will not be felt until the iPhone 16 launches in September, the first to feature the new AI powers built-in across all options.

But he expects Apple’s upcoming earnings to show improvement in China sales, a black spot since last year.

“Apple’s forecasts for the current quarter will be important” in assessing the company’s momentum, said Zino.

But “if there’s one that we were maybe a little bit more concerned about, versus the others, it would be Meta,” he said.

He pointed out that Mark Zuckerberg’s company raised its investment projections last April as it devoted a few billion dollars more on the chips, servers and data centers needed to develop generative AI.

CFRA expects Meta’s growth to decelerate through the end of the year. Combined with the expected increase in spending on AI, that should put earnings under pressure.

As for the earnings of cloud giants Microsoft (July 30) and Amazon (August 1), “we expect them to continue to report very good results, in line with or better than market expectations,” said Zino.

– ‘Crucial’ bet –

Microsoft is among the best positioned to monetize generative AI, having moved the fastest to implement it across all its products, and pouring $13 billion into OpenAI, the startup stalwart behind ChatGPT.

Winning the big bet on AI is “crucial” for the group, said Jeremy Goldman of Emarketer, “but the market is willing to give them a level of patience.”

The AI frenzy has helped Microsoft’s cloud computing business grow in the double digits, something that analysts said could be hard to sustain.

“This type of growth cannot hold forever, but the synergies between cloud and AI make it more likely that Microsoft holds onto reliable cloud growth for some time to come,” Goldman  said.

As for Amazon, “investors will want to see that the reacceleration of growth over the first quarter wasn’t a one-off” at AWS, the company’s world-leading cloud business, said Matt Britzman of Hargreaves Lansdown.

Since AWS leads “in everything data-related, it should be well placed to capture a huge chunk of the demand coming from the AI wave,” he added.

The picture “might be a little less clear” for Google parent Alphabet, which will be the first to publish results on Tuesday, “because of their search business” online, warned Zino.

“Skepticism around AI Overviews,” introduced by Google in mid-May, “is certainly justified,” said Emarketer analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.

This new feature, which offers a written text at the top of results in a Google search, ahead of the traditional links to sites, got off to a rocky start.

Internet users were quick to report strange, or potentially dangerous, answers proposed by the feature that had been touted by Google executives as the future direction of search.

According to data from BrightEdge, relayed by Search Engine Land, the number of searches presenting a result generated by AI Overviews has plummeted in recent weeks as Google shies away from the feature.

Still, many are concerned about the evolution of advertising across the internet if Google pushes on with the Overviews model, which reduces the necessity of clicking into links. Content creators, primarily the media, fear a collapse in revenues.

But for Emarketer’s Mitchell-Wolf, “as long as Google maintains its status as the default search engine across most smartphones and major browsers, it will continue to be the top destination for search, and the top destination for search ad spending.”

One of the little girls survived only “through good luck” after she landed between the rails when the pram fell off a platform at southern Sydney’s Carlton railway station, police said.

She was “largely untouched” by the train that apparently passed above her on its way to central Sydney in the early afternoon, police said.

The parents had taken a lift down to the station platform and as they exited, they took “their hands off the pram for a very, very short period of time”, New South Wales police superintendent Paul Dunstan said.

“Whether it’s a gust of wind or — we’re not quite sure — but it appears that the pram has instantly started to roll in the direction of the train lines,” he told a news conference.

Police and emergency services arrived within a few minutes of being alerted and were able to see the pram under the train, which had slowed on approach but was not scheduled to stop at the station.

“You could hear crying coming from underneath the train,” the police superintendent said.

Though one of the children was unharmed, the other girl and her 40-year-old father had been killed.

The father had “just gone into parent mode” and tried to save his daughters, Dunstan said. 

“In doing so it’s cost him his life, but it’s an incredibly brave and heroic act by the dad.”

The mother and her surviving daughter were taken to the local St. George Hospital, and were said to be in a stable condition. 

The 39-year-old mother was “in a state of shock and struggling with what’s happened” while being supported by family and friends in their local Indian community, Dunstan said.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said the local community would be pained by the accident.

“I hope over time they can gain some small solace knowing that the father died from an extraordinary, instinctive act of bravery,” Minns said.

“In the face of a terrible, terrible accident, he gave his own life to try and save his children.”

Fourteen of the dead have been identified so far, police said, with Chile’s foreign ministry saying at least one of its nationals was among them.

Earlier, officials said the drivers of both vehicles were among the dead. 

The accident happened on a road between the Bolivian town of Patacamaya and the town of Tambo Quemado in northern Chile, Torrico told the Unitel channel.

The bus had been heading toward Chile on the busy commercial and tourism route linking the two South American countries.

The initial investigation showed that the truck had crossed into the opposite lane while trying to overtake a vehicle, traffic officer Nilo Torrico said.

“This truck made a prohibited maneuver and as a result we have this unfortunate accident,” he said.

Images of the accident shared by Unitel showed the bus with its front section shattered, and the smashed truck. Some bodies were seen on the road.

First responders were working to remove bodies trapped in the destroyed vehicles, Torrico said.

Bolivia sees about 1,400 traffic deaths each year, government statistics show. Accidents are mainly due to poor driving and mechanical failures.

A collision on a busy road in southwestern Bolivia on April 4 killed 14 people and left two injured.

No casualties or damage were reported in the three countries.

The tremor hit at 8:53 pm (0253 GMT) with its epicenter eight kilometers (five miles) southeast of Jalapa city, at a depth of 265.5 kilometres, according to the USGS.

The seismological institute in El Salvador recorded the quake at a magnitude of 5.9 while that of Nicaragua registered it at 5.2-magnitude.

Civil protection authorities of the three Central American countries reported no casualties or damage to infrastructure.

Central America is on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a vast area of intense tectonic activity that runs along the west coast of the Americas and across the Pacific basin. 

The two Koreas have engaged in a tit-for-tat campaign, with the North sending nearly 2,000 trash-carrying balloons southwards since May, saying it is retaliation for propaganda balloons launched by South Korean activists.

In protest at a latest wave of North Korean balloons, the South Korean military said it was widening the scale of its frontline propoganda broadcasts.

“Effective from 1300 (0400 GMT) our military will conduct a full scale  broadcasts along the borders as we have warned repeatedly,” said a statement Sunday from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“The North is launching another batch of rubbish-carrying balloons,” an earlier statement said, noting they were flying towards the northern part of Gyeonggi.

“Please report them to the military or police and refrain from direct contact with the objects.” 

The latest batch of balloons comes three days after Seoul announced it had resumed loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts directed at North Korea and warned that it would broaden their scope if the North persisted in sending the trash. 

In declaring the start of the full-scale propaganda broadcasts, Seoul warned the North Korean army will “bear the brunt of decisive damage from its tension raising acts committed in the border area”. 

“We gravely warn that all responsibility lies squarely with the North Korean regime.”

The North’s balloons have disrupted more than 100 flights carrying 10,000 passengers, a South Korean lawmaker said earlier this month. 

In response, Seoul has fully suspended a tension-reducing military agreement and announced in June that it was resuming propaganda broadcasts along the border.

In addition to anti-Kim leaflets sent from the South, isolated North Korea is extremely sensitive about its people gaining access to South Korean pop culture products, with a recent South Korean government report pointing to a 2022 case where a man was executed for possession of content from the South.

The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The propaganda broadcasts — a tactic which dates back to the Korean War — infuriate Pyongyang, which previously threatened artillery strikes against Seoul’s loudspeaker units.

Prior to the latest propaganda broadcasts, Seoul recently resumed live-fire drills on border islands and near the demilitarised zone that divides the Korean peninsula.

The risk to the towns of Labrador City and Wabush is now “very low,” Premier Andrew Furey of Newfoundland and Labrador province told reporters. 

“We’re breathing another sigh of relief here,” he said. 

“As a result, we’re in the good position today to be able to partially lift the evacuation order” for what he called the “largest evacuation in provincial history.”

For now, only workers deemed essential — hospital employees, supermarket workers and government staff — will be allowed back as they prepare for the return of the remaining evacuees beginning Monday, he said.

The evacuation had been challenging. Residents from this remote region had to travel 300 miles (500 kilometers) to reach safety on the lone available road.

While the fire situation in eastern Canada is improving, the country’s west has seen more and more forest fires erupt in recent days. 

More than 320 fires are now burning in British Columbia province on the Pacific coast, including three particularly large blazes. Several thousand people remain on alert, ready to evacuate if necessary.

And in Alberta province, more than 5,000 people from isolated Indigenous communities were under evacuation orders, with out-of-control blazes threatening the only road providing access to each community, officials said. 

The federal Environment Ministry has issued several smoke-related air pollution advisories in the Rockies and the north, where Edmonton, the province’s second-largest city, is impacted by the smoke. 

Authorities blame a deadly combination of thunderstorms and extreme temperatures of 86 to 104 Fahrenheit (30 to 40 Celsius) for the outbreak — conditions they expect to persist for several more days.

Experts say climate change has resulted in drier and hotter conditions in many regions, sharply raising the risk of major fires.

“These assertions are baseless and insulting,” Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement after some on the US political right accused the Secret Service of “woke” hiring practices they say nearly had the former president killed. 

Mayorkas praised the “highly skilled and trained” women serving in law enforcement across the country for risking “their lives on the front lines for the safety and security of others.”

“They are brave and selfless patriots who deserve our gratitude and respect,” he wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security will “with great pride… continue to recruit, retain and elevate women in our law enforcement ranks,” he continued.

It has been one week since a gunman opened fire during a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, killing one bystander, wounding two others and leaving the Republican bloodied but alive.

Several women were seen among the Secret Service agents racing to shield Trump with their bodies as the gunshots ring out.

But they, along with their boss Kimberly Cheatle — only the second woman director of the federal agency tasked with protecting presidents current, former and would-be — are now caught in the intense scrutiny over the nearly catastrophic attack.

“There should not be any women in the Secret Service. These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women,” right-wing activist Matt Walsh wrote on X, in one typical far-right post.

Many of the attacks cited DEI — diversity, equity and inclusivity — hiring practices that some Republicans have long criticized as discriminating against white people, white men in particular.

“The results of DEI. DEI got someone killed,” read one post on the popular Libs of TikTok account.

The Secret Service has defended itself against such accusations in the past, with a spokesman telling US media just weeks before the assassination attempt that agents “are held to the highest professional standards… at no time has the agency lowered these standards.”

Cheatle, who has so far shrugged off calls to resign, is to appear before Congress on July 22 for a hearing on the assassination attempt.

The Secret Service has also agreed to an independent review ordered by President Joe Biden.

Not everyone on the right supported the criticisms.

“I saw two women — one of them with a gun in her hand and the other with her body around him,” top Trump adviser Chris LaCivita told CNN reporter Kate Sullivan, she said in a post on X.  

She said he continued: “I know this — a swarm of Secret Service agents put their lives on the line and put their bodies in between President Trump and the bullets, and anybody who’s said anything different about those people on the stage is an idiot.”

The figure, crossing the 3-million mark for the fourth straight month, represented a 51.2 percent increase compared to the same month 2023 and an 8.9 percent rise from June 2019, according to the latest data from the Japan National Tourism Organization.

In the first half of the year, the cumulative number of inbound tourists came to around 17.78 million, also a record high, which was 1 million more than the figure recorded for the first half of 2019.

The organization attributed the surge to increasing travel demand during consecutive holidays including school vacations across the globe.

Japan saw the largest number of travelers from South Korea at 703,300, up 29 percent from the pre-pandemic level in 2019, followed by those from China at 660,900, down 25.0 percent, the data showed.

Meanwhile, the number of outbound Japanese travelers in June rose 32.3 percent from a year earlier to 930,200, but was still down 38.8 percent compared with 2019.

On Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the country could see a record 35 million foreign visitors this year.

The strikes on the vital port, which triggered a raging fire and plumes of black smoke, are the first claimed by Israel in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country, about 2,000 kilometres (1,300 miles) away, analysts said.

“The blood of Israeli citizens has a price,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, adding more operations against the Huthis would follow “if they dare to attack us”.

Gallant said the Hodeida strikes were also a warning to other Iran-backed armed groups around the Middle East that have claimed attacks on Israel during the Gaza war.

“The fire that is currently burning in Hodeida, is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear,” he said.

The Israeli strikes killed three people and wounded 87, the rebel-run health ministry said in a statement carried by Huthi media.

The ministry said earlier that most of the wounded had severe burns.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned “anyone who harms us will pay a very heavy price”, after Friday’s drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian.

Just hours later, Gallant vowed Israel would retaliate against the Huthis, who control swathes of Yemen, including much of its Red Sea coast.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari accused the Huthis of using Hodeida “as a main supply route for the transfer of Iranian weapons” such as the drone which hit Tel Aviv.

– ‘Brutal aggression’ –

In a statement on social media, top Huthi official Mohammed Abdulsalam reported a “brutal Israel aggression against Yemen”.

The attack targeted “fuel storage facilities and a power plant” in Hodeida “to pressure Yemen to stop supporting” Palestinians in the Gaza war, he said.

An AFP correspondent in Hodeida reported hearing several large explosions and seeing smoke over the port.

Footage aired by the rebels’ Al-Masirah television, which AFP could not independently verify, showed casualties being treated in hospital, many of them bandaged and lying on stretchers in packed rooms.  

A man interviewed by the broadcaster said many of the wounded were port employees. 

“The city is dark, people are on the streets, petrol stations are closed and seeing long queues,” said a Hodeida resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing safety concerns.

The oil ministry sought to reassure Yemenis that there are “large and sufficient amounts of oil reserves” in a statement published by the Huthi-run Saba news agency.

Maritime security firm Ambrey said it observed four merchant vessels in the port at the time of the air strike and another eight in the anchorage. 

“No damage to merchant vessels has been reported at this time,” it said.

– Yemen aid lifeline fears –

The United States, which along with Britain has carried out several rounds of air strikes against the Huthis in an attempt to put an end to their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, said it played no part in Saturday’s strikes.

“The United States was not involved in today’s strikes in Yemen, and we did not coordinate or assist Israel with the strikes,” a US National Security Council spokesman said.

Separately, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said Saturday it “successfully destroyed” a Huthi drone during the past 24 hours over the Red Sea.

Saudi Arabia distanced itself from the Yemen strikes, with a defence ministry spokesman saying Riyadh has “no links to or involvement in targeting Hodeida”.

“The kingdom will not allow its airspace to be infiltrated by any party,” said Brigadier General Turki al-Maliki.

Hodeida port, a vital entry point for imports and international aid for rebel-held areas of Yemen, had remained largely untouched through the decade-long war between the Huthis and the internationally recognised government propped up by neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

The war has left millions of Yemenis dependent on aid supplied through the port.

“Traders now fear that this will exacerbate the already critical food security and humanitarian situation in northern Yemen, as the majority of trade flows through this port,” said Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group.

UN chief Antonio Guterres had appealed for “maximum restraint” after the Tel Aviv drone strike to avoid “further escalation in the region”.

But Huthi politburo member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti swiftly threatened revenge for the Hodeida strikes.

“The Zionist entity will pay the price for targeting civilian facilities, and we will meet escalation with escalation,” he said in a post on social media.

The Huthis’ Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, warned that the Israeli strikes on Hodeida marked a dangerous turn nine months into the Gaza war.

“The foolish step taken by the Zionist enemy heralds a new, dangerous phase,” said the group, which has exchanged nearly daily fire with the Israeli army throughout the war.

“I’m not an extremist at all,” the newly-crowned Republican presidential nominee continued at the rally in swing state Michigan, dismissing his reported links to Project 2025, a shadow manifesto from figures close to him that has been characterized by opponents as an authoritarian, right-wing wish list.

And he mocked the rival Democratic Party, roiled by unprecedented pressure for President Joe Biden to abandon his reelection bid amid concerns over his age and fitness to serve, if reelected, until 2029.

“They have no idea who their candidate is… This guy goes and he gets the votes, and now they want to take it away. That’s democracy,” Trump told the 12,000-strong crowd of passionate supporters.

In the fiery but typically rambling speech, the Republican riffed on his hardline immigration views, espoused falsehoods about migrant crime, and repeated his baseless claim that Democrats “rigged” the 2020 election.

He expressed admiration for foreign autocrats including China’s “brilliant” Xi Jinping, whom he praised for controlling “1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”

And he evoked the seconds after a gunman tried to kill him at a rally in Pennsylvania, when, bloodied and surrounded by Secret Service agents, he raised a fist and yelled for his supporters to “fight!”

The crowd in Grand Rapids chanted the word back to him multiple times Saturday, though some appeared to tire of the lengthy address after 90 minutes and began heading to the exits.

The rally represented a moment remarkable by any measure, with Trump back on the campaign trail exactly one week since the assassination attempt.

He wore a new, smaller, flesh-colored bandage over his right ear, grazed in the attack by a 20-year-old gunman who also killed one bystander.

But Trump, after his near-death experience, ignored his self-declared pivot to unity and launched into the divisive rhetoric that has marked his political career.

He hurled insults and invective, calling Biden “stupid” and a “feeble old” man, and branding Harris “crazy” and “nuts.”

The Biden-Harris campaign dismissed the speech as Trump “peddling the same lies (and) running the same campaign of revenge and retribution.”

Security was tight inside Van Andel Arena, amid questions over Secret Service lapses at the Pennsylvania rally — though there were few visible signs of enhanced law enforcement in Grand Rapids.

– Biden’s ‘big decision’ –

Meanwhile, Biden loyalists continued to defend the embattled president as the drumbeat of calls for him to abandon his campaign grows louder.

The 81-year-old and his team have remained publicly adamant that he is staying in the race, though some reports suggest discussions have begun in his inner circle about how exactly he might step aside.

There has been massive speculation over who could replace him. As vice president, Kamala Harris appears best positioned.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive, gave Harris a boost Saturday without turning her back on the president. 

“Joe Biden is our nominee,” she told MSNBC. “He has a really big decision to make. 

“But what gives me a lot of hope right now is that if President Biden decides to step back, we have Vice President Kamala Harris, who is ready to step up, to unite the party, to take on Donald Trump, and to win in November.”

Some Democrats, however, fear such a late switch could trigger chaos, dooming the party at the polls.

Team Trump, for its part, is effervescent after an exceptional streak of luck — from surviving an assassination to favorable court rulings to Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month.

Saturday was Trump’s debut campaign appearance with running mate J.D. Vance, a 39-year-old US senator with blue-collar roots who could help win over critical Rust Belt battlegrounds like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Vance warmed up the crowd, taking a swipe at Harris.

“I did serve in the United States Marine Corps and build a business. What the hell have you done, other than collect a check?” he said of the former US senator and California attorney general.

Trump supporters had begun lining up in their dozens in Grand Rapids a day before the rally began.

Edward Young, 64, was wearing a T-shirt showing the already iconic photo of Trump pumping his fist moments after being shot.

“They have turned him into a martyr and left him alive,” he said.

“Now he’s more powerful than ever.”

by Michael Mathes

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving premier, will become the first foreign leader to address a joint meeting of the two chambers four times — pulling ahead of Britain’s Winston Churchill on three.

But analysts say the Gaza war since the October 7 Hamas attacks has created worrying tensions between Israel and the United States, its main military and diplomatic backer.

Washington fears a backlash from the mounting civilian toll in the Gaza Strip, while protests in Israel by families of hostages taken by Hamas are also causing headaches for Netanyahu.

Biden and some Israeli ministers say a deal negotiated through Qatar, Egyptian and US mediators is possible. A plan outlined in May proposed a six-week ceasefire when some Israeli hostages would be swapped for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that negotiators were “inside the 10 yard line and driving toward the goal line”.

Hamas has accused Netanyahu of seeking to block a deal however and Blinken said he wants to “bring the agreement over the finish line” when Netanyahu is in Washington.

An expected meeting between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden is still not confirmed.

– Double pressure –    

Israel has intensified its air strikes on Gaza in recent weeks and Netanyahu has insisted that only piling on military pressure can free the hostages and beat Hamas. 

“This double pressure is not delaying the deal -– it is advancing it,” Netanyahu told troops in Gaza on Thursday.

The October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. Hamas militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 42 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 38,919 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Publicly, Biden has voiced strong support for Israel. But he expressed concern over an offensive on the southern city of Rafah in May and for a while suspended deliveries of heavy bombs to Israel. Supplies of 2,000-pound bombs remain embargoed. 

“Never before has the atmosphere been so fraught,” said Council on Foreign Relations Middle East specialist Steven Cook. 

“There is clearly tension in the relationship, especially between the White House and the Israeli prime minister,” Cook said in a commentary.

– ‘Political rhetoric’ – 

While US Republicans pressed to invite Netanyahu to address Congress, he has lost support among Democrats.

One Jewish senator, Democrat Brian Schatz of Hawaii, announced he would boycott Wednesday’s speech, saying he would not listen to “political rhetoric that will do nothing to bring peace in the region”.

Netanyahu said after being invited to Congress again that he would “present the truth about our just war against those who seek to destroy us”.

Cook said that Netanyahu has two aims for his Washington trip.

First, to show that he has not “undermined” Israel’s relations with the United States. 

Netanyahu also “will endeavour to shift the conversation away from the conflict in Gaza toward the threat that Iran and its proxies pose” to Israel and the United States, Cook added.

Much attention will be focused on whether Netanyahu meets with Donald Trump or a figure close to the Republican presidential candidate.

Despite the tensions, the United States has defended Israeli interests while taking a key role in mediation efforts, and the military relationship remains strong, according to officials.

Washington’s support could prove crucial as Israel faces increasing international criticism over the growing humanitarian toll from nearly 300 days of war.

The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor in May asked judges to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Warrants for three Hamas leaders have also been requested.

The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has called for sanctions against the ICC.

The International Court of Justice found Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories illegal on July 19 and in February called for the country to prevent any acts of genocide in its Gaza offensive. 

by Chloe Rouveyrolles-Bazire and Louis Baudoin-Laarman

Two round-trip flights are scheduled to shuttle between Urumqi and Tbilisi every week on this route, providing more than 100 tonnes of air cargo transport capacity, said the air cargo carrier.

The air route will mainly carry imported and exported e-commerce goods and other general cargo.

Xinjiang now serves as a comprehensive logistics hub connecting Europe and Asia. This cargo route will contribute to the high-quality construction of the Belt and Road Initiative by facilitating commerce and trade through efficient air logistics, said the airline.

With 87 freighters, SF Airlines is China’s largest air cargo carrier in terms of fleet size. The company is committed to continuously enhancing its international air cargo transport capacity and launching more routes, said SF Airlines.

The two Koreas have engaged in a tit-for-tat balloon campaign, with the North sending nearly 2,000 trash-carrying balloons southwards since May, saying it is retaliation for propaganda balloons launched by South Korean activists.

“The North is launching another batch of rubbish-carrying balloons,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement on Sunday, noting they were flying towards the northern part of Gyeonggi.

“Please report them to the military or police and refrain from direct contact with the objects.” 

The latest batch of balloons comes three days after Seoul announced it had resumed loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts directed at North Korea.

Seoul warned it will broaden the scope of such broadcasts if the North persists in sending the trash-carrying balloons, describing them as “low-class actions” and noting that “all responsibility lies squarely with the North Korean military”.

“We can increase the number of broadcast speakers in the frontline areas if the North continues its provocations,” a military official told Yonhap news agency on Saturday.

The North’s balloons have disrupted more than 100 flights carrying 10,000 passengers, a South Korean lawmaker said earlier this month. 

In response, Seoul has fully suspended a tension-reducing military agreement and announced in June that it was resuming propaganda broadcasts along the border.

In addition to anti-Kim leaflets sent from the South, isolated North Korea is extremely sensitive about its people gaining access to South Korean pop culture products, with a recent South Korean government report pointing to a 2022 case where a man was executed for possession of content from the South.

The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The propaganda broadcasts — a tactic which dates back to the Korean War — infuriate Pyongyang, which previously threatened artillery strikes against Seoul’s loudspeaker units.

Prior to the latest propaganda broadcasts, Seoul recently resumed live-fire drills on border islands and near the demilitarised zone that divides the Korean peninsula.

What began as a protest against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs snowballed this week into some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.

Soldiers are patrolling cities across Bangladesh after riot police failed to restore order, while a nationwide internet blackout since Thursday has drastically restricted the flow of information to the outside world.

The Supreme Court was meeting later Sunday to issue a verdict on whether to abolish the contentious job quotas.

Hasina, whose opponents accuse her government of bending the judiciary to her will, hinted to the public this week that the scheme would be scrapped. 

But after the mounting crackdown and a rising death toll, a favourable verdict is unlikely to mollify white-hot public anger. 

“It’s not about the rights of the students anymore,” business owner Hasibul Sheikh, 24, told AFP at the scene of a Saturday street protest, held in the capital Dhaka in defiance of a nationwide curfew.

“Our demand is one point now, and that’s the resignation of the government.”

The catalyst for this month’s unrest is a system that reserves more than half of civil service posts for specific groups, including children of veterans from the country’s 1971 liberation war against Pakistan.

Critics say the scheme benefits families loyal to Hasina, 76, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Hasina’s government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

– ‘Made the situation worse’ –

With Bangladesh unable to provide adequate employment opportunities for its 170 million people, the quota scheme is a pronounced source of resentment among young graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Hasina inflamed tensions this month by likening protesters to the Bangladeshis who had collaborated with Pakistan during the country’s independence war.

“Rather than try to address the protesters’ grievances, the government’s actions have made the situation worse,” Crisis Group’s Asia director Pierre Prakash told AFP. 

Hasina had been due to leave the country on Sunday for a diplomatic tour to Spain and Brazil but abandoned her plans after a week of escalating violence.

Since Tuesday at least 133 people, including several police officers, have been killed in clashes around the country, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals.

The US State Department warned Americans on Saturday not to travel to Bangladesh and said it would begin removing some diplomats and their families from the country due to the civil unrest.

by Shafiqul ALAM

Here, much like elsewhere in what was once Latin America’s richest country, economic hardship drives much of the discussion ahead of July 28 elections, in which President Nicolas Maduro will seek a third six-year term.

“We suffer. Fishing from the shore is no longer possible because of the oil,” fisherman Yordi Vicuna, 34, told AFP, adding that catches have fallen tenfold.

He said nets must constantly be washed or replaced after being soiled by oil that leaks from decayed pipes which the government cannot afford to fix. 

Much of Venezuela’s economic collapse — fueled partly by a sharp international drop in oil prices after 2014 — has happened under the watch of Maduro, who has been in office since 2013.

Many Venezuelans — including Vicuna — blame US sanctions for the dire situation.

“The pipeline is damaged because of the (economic) blockade,” the fisherman said, echoing the government’s official line, as he and others shoveled oil-soaked sand from the lake shore.

“We ask the competent agencies, people from outside, to support the government in any way… to fix the pipelines,” Vicuna added.

– Boom to bust –

More than a century ago, the hydrocarbon-rich Maracaibo Basin was the birthplace of a business that transformed Venezuela into one of the world’s top 10 oil producers — fueling a decades-long period of incredible prosperity.

The country, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, was producing 3.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2008, with the United States as its main client.

But in just 12 years this dropped to fewer than half a million barrels following the nationalization of the industry and a crippling, months-long strike at state oil company PDVSA in protest against then-President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez sacked thousands of PDVSA staff and managers, who observers say were replaced mainly by non-expert loyalists.

As oil production dipped, Venezuela fell into an economic crisis marked by years of recession and hyperinflation that has seen an estimated seven million people — almost a quarter of the population — flee the country in just under a decade.

Most analysts blame the industry’s rapid decline on corruption and inept management at PDVSA, worsened by the toughening of sanctions on Venezuela after Maduro’s 2018 reelection, which was not recognized by dozens of countries.

– ‘The lake is lost’ –

A few oil pumps still operate on Lake Maracaibo’s polluted shore, but dozens of machines stand idle. 

The Puyuyo beach near the Bajo Grande refinery is black with oil. It was once a popular swim spot but most small hotels and bars here are now closed.

“People used to come here… Families came from all over to visit, eat fish and swim but now there are 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) of oil” on the bottom of the lake, said Guillermo Albeniz Cano.

The 64-year-old owns a beach cafe but has no clients. Instead, he barters rice and flour for the occasional fish or crab meat.

When AFP visited Puyuyo, only one table of the cafe was occupied — by crabbers playing dominoes who said they would rather be working.

“Since there is a lot of oil in the lake, we could not go out today,” said father-of-four Luis Angel Vega.

“Sometimes we don’t eat for a whole day, the 26-year-old added.

His colleague Alvaro Villamil, 61, tried his luck nevertheless. On his boat “Carmen Rosa,” he showed his catch of a few blue crabs he managed to get from the less-polluted center of the lake. 

But it is not enough to make a living.

“It’s hard… The lake is lost. There’s a lot of oil,” Villamil told AFP, his long-sleeved T-shirt stained with the stuff.

– ‘For sale’ –

Maracaibo was a flourishing city in the 20th century, with its colonial buildings, Art Deco theater and tramline.

Today, “for sale” signs on properties far outnumber election campaign posters, while tall grass and crumbling walls abound in the industrial zone.

Some 200 companies, including the German firm Siemens, once had a presence in the area. Today there are about 30.

Yet there are signs that Venezuela’s oil fortunes may be looking up again. 

Despite the renewal of sanctions after Maduro reneged on negotiated conditions for elections, Washington is allowing companies such as Chevron and Repsol to apply for individual licenses to keep operating in Venezuela.

And Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea said in May he was optimistic that Venezuelan oil production would reach a million barrels per day this year.

This will depend largely on what happens in next Sunday’s vote, with widespread fear that Maduro will steal the election and unlock a new era of international pariahdom. 

by Patrick FORT

In the midst of a blazing summer, some social media influencers are offering potentially dangerous advice on sun protection, despite stepped-up warnings from health experts about over-exposure amid rising rates of skin cancer.

Further undermining public health, videos — some garnering millions of views — share “homemade” recipes that use ingredients such as beef tallow, avocado butter and beeswax for what is claimed to provide effective skin protection.

In one viral TikTok video, “transformation coach” Jerome Tan discards a commercial cream and tells his followers that eating natural foods will allow the body to make its “own sunscreen.” 

He offers no scientific evidence for this.

Such online misinformation is increasingly causing real-world harm, experts say.

One in seven American adults under 35 think daily sunscreen use is more harmful than direct sun exposure, and nearly a quarter believe staying hydrated can prevent a sunburn, according to a survey this year by Ipsos for the Orlando Health Cancer Institute.

“People buy into a lot of really dangerous ideas that put them at added risk,” warned Rajesh Nair, an oncology surgeon with the institute. 

– ‘No safe tan’ –

As influencers increasingly cast doubt on commercial sunscreen products, another US survey showed a dip in their use, with some 75 percent of Americans using sunscreen regularly, down from 79 percent in 2022.

The findings coincide with other trends showing rising public mistrust of established medical guidance — including on Covid-19 and other vaccines — and increasing reliance on influencers with little or no scientific knowledge. 

Dermatologists are scrambling to disabuse people of the increasingly popular perception that higher levels of sun exposure are good for the skin.

“There is no safe tan,” Daniel Bennett, a dermatologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, told AFP.

“The evidence that ultraviolet light exposure is the primary preventable driver of skin cancer is overwhelming,” he added.

Many of the misleading or false claims come from influencers seeking to monetize their content on social media platforms, an echo chamber where sensational and false claims often drive engagement, experts say.

Some content creators are leveraging “sunscreen skepticism” to “sell their own supplements or endorse alternative all-natural sunscreens,” Eric Dahan, founder of the influencer marketing agency Mighty Joy, told AFP.

– ‘Sun paranoia’ –

Dahan pointed out one Instagram post that advised against “wearing sunscreen constantly” while promoting a range of skincare products.

“Say goodbye to sun paranoia,” the emoji-laden post said. “Catch some (guilt-free) rays this summer.”

Clutching a surfboard on a beach, another bare-chested Instagram influencer says he rejects sunscreen.

“Do I worry about skin cancer? I do not,” he posted, while promoting “animal-based sunscreen” made from beef tallow.

Tallow — essentially rendered, purified beef fat — alone has no ability to block ultraviolet radiation, said Megan Poynot Couvillion, a dermatologist practicing in Texas.

“I don’t see a problem with using it on the skin as an emollient, but absolutely not as a sunscreen,” she told AFP.

The US Food and Drug Administration has called for more research into the ingredients in commercial sunscreens, but it does recommend their use, noting that excessive sun exposure is a major contributor to skin cancer.

Homemade sunscreens “lack effective sun protection,” leaving users vulnerable to sunburn, premature skin aging and skin cancer, the American Academy of Dermatology warns.

Some influencers’ recipes include zinc oxide, a known sun protector. But concocting sunscreen at home that will effectively block UV radiation is unrealistic, said Adam Friedman, professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

“There’s no way you’re making this in your basement,” Friedman told AFP.

by Rob Lever and Anuj Chopra

The disaster occurred at around 2:30 a.m. Saturday, which damaged over 40 houses and affected 1,254 residents in Xinhua village, Hanyuan County under Ya’an City, local authorities said.

A total of 443 rescuers have been sent to the scene immediately. Roads and communications have been partially restored, and the affected residents have been accommodated.

The rescue operation is still underway. 

“These assertions are baseless and insulting,” Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement after the some on the US political right accused the Secret Service of “woke” hiring practices they say nearly got the former president killed. 

He praised the “highly skilled and trained” women serving at every level of law enforcement across the country for risking “their lives on the front lines for the safety and security of others.”

“They are brave and selfless patriots who deserve our gratitude and respect,” he wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security will “with great pride, focus and devotion to mission, continue to recruit, retain and elevate women in our law enforcement ranks. Our Department will be the better for it, and our country more secure,” he continued.

In the week since a gunman opened fire during a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, killing one bystander, wounding two others and leaving the Republican bloodied but alive, right-wingers have unleashed a torrent of criticism on the Secret Service for having women in its ranks. 

Several women can be seen among the black-suited, sunglasses-clad agents racing to shield Trump with their bodies as the gunshots ring out at the rally, before hustling him from the stage and into a waiting car and safety.

But they, along with their boss Kimberly Cheatle — only the second-ever woman director of the federal agency tasked with protecting presidents current, former and would-be — are now caught in the intense scrutiny over the nearly catastrophic attack.

“There should not be any women in the Secret Service. These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women,” right-wing activist Matt Walsh wrote on X, in one typical post.

Many of the attacks cited DEI — diversity, equity and inclusivity — hiring practices that some Republicans have long criticized as discriminating against white people, white men in particular.

“The results of DEI. DEI got someone killed,” read one post on the popular Libs of TikTok account.

The Secret Service has defended itself against such accusations in the past, with a spokesman telling US media just weeks before the assassination attempt that agents “are held to the highest professional standards… at no time has the agency lowered these standards.”

On Saturday, she was attending his first campaign event since the shooting, convinced God has placed a “protective hedge” around the Republican seeking a return to the Oval Office.

White, a 57-year-old from North Carolina who has traveled to dozens of Trump speeches, was among many faithful in the thousands-strong crowd at the rally in Grand Rapids who said they had no doubt Trump is alive today because of divine intervention. 

The messianic fervor has only grown since the shock shooting one week earlier. And it was coursing through the arena from the moment a prayer for Trump kicked off the proceedings. 

“God has a protective hedge around him,” White told AFP, recalling the chaos in Butler, Pennsylvania when Trump was injured by a would-be assassin, and how the 78-year-old Republican rose to his feet and defiantly pumped his fist in the air.

“Trump has a job and a mission to do, like Noah and Moses” from the Bible, said White, wearing a baby blue “Make America Great Again” cap.

“Do we believe that this is a God moment? Yes,” she added. “He’s taking arrows for all of us.”

Trump himself, wearing a smaller, more discreet bandage on his ear Saturday compared to the large white square visible earlier in the week, also touched on how providence played a role. 

“I stand before you only by the grace of almighty God,” he told the crowd.

“I shouldn’t be here right now, but something very special happened.”

– ‘Closer to God’ –

Jan Dejong, a retired nurse who waited in line for hours to enter Saturday’s rally, said the post-shooting energy, the vibe, and Trump himself — it all feels different. 

“Something changed,” she said, noting Trump’s somber demeanor at the recent Republican National Convention, where he was crowned the party flagbearer to challenge President Joe Biden in November.

Trump “is thankful to be here,” Dejong said. “I think he was spared, to be our president.”

While many insist faith had a hand in Trump’s survival, rally-goer Danny Clemons of Benton Harbor, Michigan said it does not make Trump a divine figure. 

But he believes faith ran in both directions on that fateful day in Pennsylvania.

“Him not being assassinated, I think that made him more of a believer, I think that brought him closer to God,” Clemons told AFP.

In his pre-politics days, Trump displayed a distaste for religion and boasted of actions that stand in clear opposition to Christian precepts.

But Trump “looks like a different person after that” assassination attempt, according to Clemons.

Trump has said he was raised Presbyterian but now considers himself a “non-denominational Christian.”

Sitting in the arena seats was 60-year-old Fred Kopplow, a health care executive from Traverse City who said he too believes “faith did make an intervention” when Trump ever so slightly turned his head, leaving a bullet to graze his ear instead of causing catastrophic damage.

“It wasn’t the wind,” Kopplow said. “Something had to intervene.”

While Trump and two other people were injured, one rally attendee in Butler — a firefighter — was killed in the shooting as he protected his family in the chaos. 

“I think it’s beyond sad but he had a greater good,” Kopplow said. “He didn’t die in vain.”

by Michael Mathes

The strikes on the vital port, which triggered a raging fire and plumes of black smoke, are the first claimed by Israel in the Arabian peninsula’s poorest country, about 2,000 kilometres (1,300 miles) away, analysts said.

“The blood of Israeli citizens has a price,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, adding more operations against the Huthis would follow “if they dare to attack us”.

Gallant said the Hodeida strikes were also a warning to other Iran-backed armed groups around the Middle East that have claimed attacks on Israel during the Gaza war.

“The fire that is currently burning in Hodeida, is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear,” he said.

The Israeli strikes killed three people and wounded 87, the rebel-run health ministry said in a statement carried by Huthi media.

The ministry said earlier that most of the wounded had severe burns.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the warning in a televised address. “Anyone who harms us will pay a very heavy price for their aggression,” he said.

Just hours after Friday’s strike in Tel Aviv, Gallant had vowed Israel would retaliate against the Huthis, who control swathes of Yemen, including much of its Red Sea coast.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said F-15 jets carried out the strike and all returned safely to base.

Rear Admiral Hagari accused the Huthis of using Hodeida “as a main supply route for the transfer of Iranian weapons… like the (drone) that was used in the attack on Friday”.

– ‘Brutal aggression’ –

In a statement on social media, top Huthi official Mohammed Abdulsalam reported a “brutal Israel aggression against Yemen”.

The attack targeted “fuel storage facilities and a power plant” in Hodeida “to pressure Yemen to stop supporting” Palestinians in the Gaza war, he said.

An AFP correspondent in Hodeida reported hearing several large explosions and seeing smoke over the port.

Footage aired by the rebels’ Al-Masirah television, which AFP could not independently verify, showed casualties being treated in hospital, many of them bandaged and lying on stretchers in packed rooms.  

A man interviewed by the broadcaster said many of the wounded were port employees. 

“The city is dark, people are on the streets, petrol stations are closed and seeing long queues,” said a Hodeida resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing safety concerns. 

Maritime security firm Ambrey said it observed four merchant vessels in the port at the time of the air strike and another eight in the anchorage. 

“No damage to merchant vessels has been reported at this time,” it said.

– Yemen aid lifeline fears –

The United States, which along with Britain has carried out several rounds of air strikes against the Huthis in an attempt to put an end to their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, said it played no part in Saturday’s strikes.

“The United States was not involved in today’s strikes in Yemen, and we did not coordinate or assist Israel with the strikes,” a US National Security Council spokesman said.

“We’ve been in regular and ongoing contact with the Israelis following the strike in Tel Aviv that killed an Israeli civilian on Friday morning. We fully recognise and acknowledge Israel’s right to self-defence.”

UN chief Antonio Guterres had appealed for “maximum restraint” after the Tel Aviv drone strike to avoid “further escalation in the region”.

But Huthi politburo member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti swiftly threatened revenge for the Hodeida strikes.

“The Zionist entity will pay the price for targeting civilian facilities, and we will meet escalation with escalation,” he said in a post on social media.

The Huthis’ Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, warned that the Israeli strikes on Hodeida marked a dangerous turn nine months into the Gaza war.

“The foolish step taken by the Zionist enemy heralds a new, dangerous phase,” said the group, which has exchanged nearly daily fire with the Israeli army throughout the war.

Hodeida port, a vital entry point for imports and international aid for rebel-held areas of Yemen, had remained largely untouched through the decade-long war between the Huthis and the internationally recognised government propped up by neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

The war has left millions of Yemenis dependent on aid supplied through the port.

“Traders now fear that this will exacerbate the already critical food security and humanitarian situation in northern Yemen, as the majority of trade flows through this port,” said Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group.

“It’s my greatest honor to be on this stage with not only these legends of the game, people who have inspired me every single day of my life — not because you’ve only won Grand Slams, not because you’ve shaped our sport but every single one of these people have shaped the world we live in,” Paes said.

“I would like to thank you so much for giving this Indian boy hope.”

Amritraj, 70, played from 1970 until retiring in 1993, winning 15 ATP singles titles and 399 matches and being ranked as high as 18th in the world and helped India to the Davis Cup finals in 1974 and 1987.

“I am humbled and honored to join this incredible and exclusive group that have brought glory to our sport,” Amritraj said.

After his playing days, Amritraj has helped humanitarian causes, backed ATP and WTA events in India and has acted in the James Bond and Star Trek movie series.

“A feeling came over me that I had never experienced,” Amritraj said of learning about his election to the Hall. “This was an honor not just for me, for my family, for my parents, but for all of my fellow Indians and my country who live around the world.”

Like Amritraj, Evans was inducted in the contributor category for his life impact on the sport.

Paes, 51, was an 18-time Grand Slam champion in doubles and mixed doubles who was selected in the player category after honing his trade in an Amritraj youth academy.

– ‘Inspire the world’ –

Paes and Amritraj made India the 28th nation represented in the Hall of Fame.

“Playing for 1.4 billion people could either be pressure or it could be wind within your wings,” Paes said.

“I’d like to thank every single one of my countrymen who supported me, who stood by through all the ups and downs, and we’ve been through a few, but you all were the inspiration, the support, you were even the strength to guide me through when even I didn’t believe.”

Paes won career Grand Slams in both men’s and mixed doubles, completing one in men’s by winning the 2012 Australian Open and another in mixed by capturing the 2016 French Open.

He won the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bronze medal by defeating Brazil’s Fernando Meligeni 3-6, 6-2, 6-4.

His only ATP singles title came in 1998 on Newport grass in the same venue where he was inducted.

“As my father always said to me, if you believe in yourself, you work hard, you’ll be passionate not only to win prize money and trophies, but you do that to inspire the world,” Paes said.

“It has been my greatest honor to play for my countrymen in seven Olympics, to stand where the national anthem is playing in all those Davis Cups, and to prove that we Asians can win Grand Slams and also be number one in our field, be it tennis or anything.”

“These assertions are baseless and insulting,” Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement after the some on the US political right accused the Secret Service of “woke” hiring practices they say nearly got the former president killed. 

He praised the “highly skilled and trained” women serving at every level of law enforcement across the country for risking “their lives on the front lines for the safety and security of others.”

“They are brave and selfless patriots who deserve our gratitude and respect,” he wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security will “with great pride, focus and devotion to mission, continue to recruit, retain and elevate women in our law enforcement ranks. Our Department will be the better for it, and our country more secure,” he continued.

In the week since a gunman opened fire during a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, killing one bystander, wounding two others and leaving the Republican bloodied but alive, right-wingers have unleashed a torrent of criticism on the Secret Service for having women in its ranks. 

Several women can be seen among the black-suited, sunglasses-clad agents racing to shield Trump with their bodies as the gunshots ring out at the rally, before hustling him from the stage and into a waiting car and safety.

But they, along with their boss Kimberly Cheatle — only the second-ever woman director of the federal agency tasked with protecting presidents current, former and would-be — are now caught in the intense scrutiny over the nearly catastrophic attack.

“There should not be any women in the Secret Service. These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women,” right-wing activist Matt Walsh wrote on X, in one typical post.

Many of the attacks cited DEI — diversity, equity and inclusivity — hiring practices that some Republicans have long criticized as discriminating against white people, white men in particular.

“The results of DEI. DEI got someone killed,” read one post on the popular Libs of TikTok account.

The Secret Service has defended itself against such accusations in the past, with a spokesman telling US media just weeks before the assassination attempt that agents “are held to the highest professional standards… at no time has the agency lowered these standards.”

Top seed Zverev eased to a 6-2, 6-4 victory as the 27-year-old booked a spot in a third consecutive clay-court final after Rome and the French Open.

Zverev now leads the ATP Tour with 44 wins this year, two ahead of top-ranked Jannik Sinner.

The German will face Arthur Fils in Sunday’s final.

He has a 2-0 head-to-head record over the Frenchman, beating him in three sets on grass in Halle last month and in the semi-finals in Hamburg in 2023.

“He’s somebody that is extremely aggressive and he’s somebody that is very young,” Zverev said.

“He obviously has the talent, he has the potential to be one of the best players in the world, and it’s up to him to realise his potential. 

“Tomorrow I’m going to do everything that I can to prevent that, for him to make a step forward. But he’s a great talent and there’s nothing bad to say about him.”

Fils, 20, defeated third seed Sebastian Baez 6-2, 6-2 in his semi-final.

“It was very hot, so it was very fast and my serve was working pretty well. That helped me a lot today and I don’t know if tomorrow it will be that hot, but I hope so,” said the world number 28.

The border patrol “took fire from unknown persons on the Turkish side” near the town of Soufli, it said.

The police in a statement said the incident occurred during “an operation to prevent the illegal entry of migrants from Turkey.”

The guard was hospitalised. No detail was given on his condition.

The Greek-Turkish border is a common entry point to smuggle migrants into Greece — a member of the European Union — particularly in the summer when the waters of the Evros River run low.

In 2020, Ankara was seen by Athens to have encouraged thousands of migrants to attempt to cross the frontier into Greece, causing days of clashes with border guards.

Michelsen, last year’s Newport runner-up, defeated Opelka 6-2, 6-0 in only 59 minutes in the ATP grass-court event at Rhode Island.

“At the beginning, he was having break points on my serve and I was like, this is going to be one of those matches that’s going to come down to the wire,” Michelsen said.

“And then I didn’t miss a return when I touched the ball. Probably the best tournament day of my life.”

World number 61 Michelsen will play for the title against 46th-ranked Giron, who won the other all-American semi-final 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 over Chris Eubanks.

“Making it to the final is amazing,” Giron said. “It’s tough. The margins are so small.”

Giron, who has never faced Michelsen in an ATP match, lost his only prior ATP finals in 2022 in San Diego and this past February in Dallas.

Michelsen lost to France’s Adrian Mannarino in last year’s Newport final, his only prior tour championship match.

“We practice a lot. We’re both from Southern California. It’s cool to see he’s doing well,” Giron said.

Michelsen became the youngest player since Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz at Umag in 2022 to reach consecutive finals at the same ATP event.

“Last year I had zero expectations on myself and this year I put a little bit more expectations on myself,” Michelsen said.

“I’m going to be taking a lot more experience into the match. Last year in the final I had about zero and now I’ve got a year.”

Opelka, who sent a backhand wide to end matters, was playing in his first ATP event since 2022 at Washington.

At 1,188th in the world, Opelka is the lowest-ranked player in the ATP era to reach a semi-final, having tumbled down the ATP standings during his absence following hip and wrist operations.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

“The Israeli enemy launched a raid on the town of Adloun” in south Lebanon, the state-run National News Agency said, adding that “a number of civilians have been injured” and traffic on the highway interrupted in both directions.

Videos circulating online showed several big explosions in the coastal town.

“Shrapnel from the explosions flew to surrounding villages,” the NNA said.

Earlier Saturday, NNA said Syrian nationals, including children, had been injured after an “enemy drone targeted an empty four-wheel drive” near their tent, close to the border.

Doctor Mouenes Kalakesh, who heads the Marjayoun government hospital, said a woman and her three children, two of them minors, had been admitted for shrapnel injuries after the strike outside Burj al-Muluk.

Among them was an 11-year-old boy in critical condition after he sustained shrapnel injuries and a head wound, Kalakesh told AFP.

Hezbollah said it launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” on Dafna, an area in Israel’s north that the group said it was targeting for the first time, “in response to the attack on civilians”.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said they also fired a rocket salvo from south Lebanon towards an Israeli military position in the Upper Galilee “in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

Later on Saturday, the Iran-backed Hezbollah said it also had launched “explosive-laden drones” targeting “artillery and missile positions” and Israeli troops at a site in the Golan Heights as well as Iron Dome platforms.

Before the drone attack, the Israeli army said a total of 45 “projectiles” had been fired from Lebanon Saturday afternoon, towards the occupied Golan Heights and the Galilee, reporting no casualties.

The army said it struck “the launcher in southern Lebanon from which the projectiles were launched toward the Golan Heights,” also targeting “an additional Hezbollah launcher”.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned that his Iran-backed group would hit new targets in Israel if more civilians were killed in Israeli strikes.

Israeli strikes on Thursday killed at least five people in Lebanon, including the commander of a Hamas-allied group, a security source and militant groups said.

The violence since October has killed at least 515 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. 

Most of the dead have been fighters, but they have included at least 104 civilians.

On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.

At nine months pregnant, Ola Adnan Harb al-Kurd managed to survive just long enough to reach Al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza after an overnight strike hit her home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, medics said. 

Emergency department doctors rushed into action when they saw the heavily pregnant woman arrive in critical condition, the head of the obstetrics and gynaecology department, Raed al-Saudi, said. 

She was taken to the operating room, but was already “almost dead”, surgeon Akram Hussein told AFP.  

Unable to save the mother, who they said was in her 20s, doctors detected a heartbeat and a team of obstetricians and surgeons was called. 

“An emergency caesarean section was performed, and the foetus was extracted,” Saudi said.  

Kurd was among at least 30 people killed across the Gaza Strip in a punishing 24 hours of Israeli bombardment that killed six members of one family in a neighbourhood north of Gaza City, rescuers and medics in Hamas-run Gaza said. 

At least seven people  were killed in overnight strikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp, a civil defence spokesperson said.  

Medical sources at Al-Awda Hospital said four children from Nuseirat were wounded while playing on a roof, with one requiring an amputation.  

Kurd’s husband was also wounded in the missile attack that hit their home, said surgeon Hussein.  

After surviving the C-section, baby Malek Yassin faced further medical hurdles. Born in critical condition, he was stabilised after receiving oxygen and medical attention, Saudi said. 

The war in Gaza has made childbirth increasingly perilous, with pregnant women facing near-daily strikes that hamper access to health facilities. 

If they are able to reach a hospital, they find facilities that humanitarian groups say are stretched to breaking point.

Just 1,500 hospital beds are currently available to Gaza’s more than two million people, compared with 3,500 beds before the war, UN agencies have said.

Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat is the only medical facility that has been able to provide obstetric and gynaecological care in central Gaza since the war began last year. 

Pre-term deliveries and maternal complications, including eclampsia, haemorrhage and sepsis, have been rising, Doctors Without Borders said this week.

The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 42 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 38,919 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.

Latvian rookie Martins Sesks, of M-Sport Ford, was in third place behind the two Toyota drivers going into Sunday’s final day.

Ott Tanak, the 2019 world champion, was fourth after a late problem while series leader Thierry Neuville of Hyundai was eighth, more than two minutes 30 seconds off the lead held by defending champion Rovanpera.

British driver Elfyn Evans suffered a bizarre incident on the 14th stage when his Toyota collided with an inflatable advertising arch.

The structure then got caught in the wheels of Tanak’s Hyundai, leaving the Estonian annoyed that he had not been warned by officials of the hindrance.

“They were certainly having a good meal and a good wine when, from the camera, they could see that the road was blocked and that a car was coming,” said Tanak who managed to remove the arch himself.

Four final stages will be contested on the rally on Sunday.

Standings:

1. Kalle Rovanpera/Jonne Halttunen (FIN/Toyota) 1:58:55.6, 2. Sebastien Ogier/Vincent Landais (FRA/Toyota) at 42.5 sec, 3. Martins Sesks/Renars Francis (LVA/Ford M-Sport) 47.2, 4. Ott Tanak/Martin Järveoja (EST/Hyundai) 1:08.0, 5. Adrien Fourmaux/Alexandre Coria (FRA/M-Sport Ford) 1:16.4, 6. Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin (GBR/Toyota) 1:34.3, 7. Takamoto Katsuta/Aaron Johnston (JPN-IRL/Toyota) 1:46.0, 8. Thierry Neuville/Martijn Wydaeghe (BEL/Hyundai) 2:33.9

Government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya said the cumulative number of suspected cases had hit 11,166, including 450 deaths, for a fatality rate of four percent.

He said a report by the country’s health ministry revealed “an exponential increase in the number of cases”.

Muyaya added that the western province of Equateur was worst affected.

The report said the government was taking a series of measures to combat the disease, notably “medical care, monitoring of contacts with the respective health zones (and) promotion of community-based surveillance.”

The report came just days after the World Health Organization warned of the threat to global health posed by the “Mpox” disease amid concern of a potential epidemic outbreak of a new, more deadly strain of the virus in the DRC.

The latest outbreak shows “no sign of slowing down”, said WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

He cited 11,000 reported cases and 445 deaths, with children worst affected.

Rosamund Lewis, specialist in monkey pox at the WHO, also warned of the risk of the virus crossing borders. 

South Africa recently reported 20 cases, including three deaths.

Mpox was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what was then Zaire, now the DRC. Since then it has been mainly limited to countries in the west and centre of the continent.

Historically, most sufferers were contaminated by infected animals.

But since May 2022, health officials have reported Mpox virus infections worldwide, primarily affecting gay and bisexual men.

Since last September, a new, even more deadly strain has been spreading in the DRC, also being transmitted through sexual contact between men.

The new strain has so far been transmitted exclusively from person to person, Lewis said.

Protests have swept Bangladesh this month against a quota system for civil service jobs that critics say benefits supporters of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15 years of autocratic rule.

The near-daily marches escalated this week into civil unrest which left more than 120 people dead.

A statement from the UAE’s public prosecutor’s office carried by state news agency WAM did not specify the number of Bangladeshis detained for demonstrating.

It alleged that they “committed crimes of gathering in a public place and protesting against their home government with the intent to incite unrest”.

“The public prosecution has ordered their pre-trial detention pending further investigations,” the statement said, accusing the suspects of endangering the interests and security of the UAE and disrupting public order.

The Emirati authorities did not specify when or where the alleged protests took place or how many people were suspected of taking part. 

The unrest sweeping Bangladesh poses a monumental challenge to its 76-year-old prime minister, who has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

The UAE, an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms, is populated mostly by expatriates, many of them south Asians who work as labourers.

Bangladeshis form the third largest expatriate group in the UAE, after Pakistanis and Indians, according to the UAE foreign ministry. 

The oil-rich Gulf state bans unauthorised protests and prohibits criticism of rulers or speech that is deemed to create or encourage social unrest.

Defamation, as well as verbal and written insults, whether published or made in private, are punishable by law.

The country’s penal code also criminalises offending foreign states or jeopardising ties with them.

Rico Krieger, 30, was convicted under six articles of Belarus’s criminal code including “terrorism” and “mercenary activity” at a secretive trial held at the end of June, according to Belarusian rights group Viasna.

“Taking into account a request from the German Foreign Ministry, Belarus has proposed concrete solutions on the available options for developing the situation,” Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz said.

“The foreign ministries of the two countries are holding consultations on this topic,” he added.

Few details have been published about the case.

Part of the court proceedings were held behind closed doors, the exact allegations against the man were not immediately clear and there has been little information in Belarusian state media about the trial.

According to a LinkedIn profile that Viasna said belonged to Krieger, he worked as a medic for the German Red Cross and had previously been employed as an armed security officer for the US embassy in Berlin.

A source at the German Foreign Ministry told AFP on Friday that it and the embassy in Minsk were “providing the person in question with consular services and are making intensive representations to the Belarusian authorities on his behalf.”

The source added that “the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman form of punishment that Germany rejects under all circumstances”.

Belarus is reported to have executed as many as 400 people since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Amnesty International. 

But executions of foreign citizens are rare. 

The country is run as an authoritarian regime by long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has detained thousands of dissidents and civic activists who oppose him.

The former Rabat bar association president was convicted on charges of “embezzlement and squandering of public funds”, the lawyer Ali Reda Ziane, who is also his son, told AFP.

The charges relate to funds the Moroccan Liberal Party (PML) — of which Mohamed Ziane was founder and chief — received in a 2015 electoral campaign.

“This is a form of life sentence for an 81-year-old man while legally nothing has been proven”, said the lawyer, who plans to appeal the ruling.

Ziane, who was human rights minister between 1995 and 1996, has been in detention since November 2022, after being sentenced the three years on appeal.

The opposition figure had become known in recent years for statements criticising the authorities in Morocco, particularly the intelligence services.

He said he was being judged “because of his opinions”.

The proceedings follow an interior ministry complaint on seven counts, among them contempt of public officials and justice, insults against a constituted body, defamation, adultery and sexual harassment.

In the same case, the financial crimes chamber of the Rabat appeals court sentenced the PML treasurer and a party administrative employee to five years in prison and one year in prison plus a one-year suspended sentence, respectively.

The ceasefire, which was extended to July 31, comes after clashes saw its fighters seize territory from the military along a strategic highway to China.

The area has been rocked by fighting since late last month, when the so-called Three Brotherhood Alliance renewed an offensive against junta troops along the road to China’s Yunnan province.

The alliance of ethnic minority armed groups — made up of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) — initially agreed to a four-day ceasefire from July 14-18.

A third member of the alliance, the Arakan Army, did not agree to the ceasefire.

“China put a lot of pressure on us to have a ceasefire immediately,” the leader from the TNLA, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

“Therefore, we have to do it as we can’t avoid it.”

But the leader warned that if junta troops launched offensives on the alliance’s troops or if they continued to bomb civilians during the ceasefire, they would “attack back”.

Fighting broke out in Myanmar after the military’s ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in a coup in 2021.

The putsch sparked renewed fighting with ethnic minority armed groups, as well as with pro-democracy “People’s Defence Forces”.

The clashes in the Shan state since last month shredded a previous Beijing-brokered truce that in January halted an earlier push by the three groups.

The new agreement, however, does not cover the neighbouring Mandalay region, where members of the alliance and other opponents of the military have been battling junta troops in recent weeks.

China is a major ally and arms supplier to the junta, but analysts say it also maintains ties with armed ethnic groups in Myanmar that hold territory near its border.

Myanmar’s borderlands are home to myriad ethnic armed groups who have battled the military since independence from Britain in 1948 for autonomy and control of lucrative resources.

Some have given shelter and training to newer “People’s Defence Forces” (PDFs) that have sprung up to battle the military after the coup in 2021.

AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.

Trong died on Friday at a military hospital in Hanoi “due to old age and serious illness” at the age of 80.

The funeral will take place over two days in the Vietnamese capital on July 25 and July 26, during which a period of national mourning will be observed, the Communist Party of Vietnam said.

Trong will be laid to rest at Hanoi’s Mai Dich Cemetery at 3 pm (0800 GMT) on July 26, the party said in a statement.

“His death is a huge loss for the party, state and people and his family,” the statement said.

Entertainment and sporting event organisers have already suspended activities, with social media users in the country changing their profile pictures to black in a show of mourning for the late leader.

Users on Facebook, X and Threads also posted photos and eulogies of the former Communist Party general secretary.

Vietnam has one of most heavily restricted media environments in the world and citizens are often hesitant to express their views online.

“A great heart has stopped,” Hoang Quoc Ky wrote on his Facebook page after changing his cover photo to a picture of Vietnam’s national flag flying at half-mast.

“He was a bright and perfect communist, a sharp politician… who devoted his whole life for socialism and the happiness of the people,” Ky added.

– ‘Rest in peace’ –

“Trong was a very enthusiastic patriot in his own manner,” blogger DzungArt Nguyen wrote in a Facebook post.

“(We) acknowledge his passion… may he rest in peace.”

The profile pictures of social media accounts for Vietnamese state media agencies were also changed to black, with companies and NGOs in the country following suit.

In Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Vietnamese embassy “to mourn the passing” of his fellow communist party general secretary, state news outlet Xinhua reported.

Trong’s death was announced a day after Vietnam’s Communist Party said he would hand the reins of power to the country’s president and former public security minister To Lam.

At the time, the party said Trong would be focusing on treatment for an undisclosed medical condition, the first time it had addressed long-standing speculation about the ageing leader’s health.

The party gave no further details about Trong’s illness.

Trong is the first party general secretary to die in office since the death in 1986 of Le Duan, a brother-in-arms of Ho Chi Minh.

He is also the first leader to have held three consecutive mandates at the head of the party, after the liberalisation of the economy in 1986.

by Tran Thi Minh Ha

The 24-year-old Briton, who had bossed Friday’s two practice sessions, demonstrated his pace and potential with a fastest lap in one minute and 16.098 seconds to outpace his team-mate by 0.044 seconds in a convincing one-two for the McLaren team.  

Three-time world champion and series leader Max Verstappen, who leads Norris by 84 points in the drivers’ title race, was third for Red Bull ahead of George Russell of Mercedes, Carlos Sainz of Ferrari and RB’s Daniel Ricciardo. 

In a session of some surprises, Williams’ Alex Albon was seventh ahead of Nico Hulkenberg of Haas and Yuki Tsunoda of RB with seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, who is seeking a record-increasing ninth Hungarian victory, tenth in the second Mercedes. 

Charles Leclerc was 11th for Ferrari and Sergio Perez 13th in the second Red Bull.

On a significantly cooler day, with an ambient temperature of only 27 degrees Celsius, the session began in desultory fashion with few drivers making an early start and, after five minutes only one time on the board, from Perez.

Verstappen joined him and began a series of ever-faster laps to go top and trim his best time down to 1:17.938 when, with 15 minutes gone, he was the only man on track. It was hardly boisterous entertainment for a big crowd around the Hungaroring. 

Others began to join the fray with Lance Stroll of Aston Martin and Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas clocking times before Alex Albon went top for Williams, only to be rapidly replaced by Norris and Russell. 

The Briton’s lap in 1:16.826 suggested Mercedes were happier in the cooler conditions than those of a sweltering Friday. Hamilton, who had seemed ill at ease as he slithered in pursuit, then went second, within two-tenths of his team-mate.

The Silver Arrows joy was short-lived, however, as McLaren then came and showed their potential, Norris clocked a lap in 1:16.098 followed by Piastri, just four-hundredths of a second adrift, ahead of Verstappen. 

As the times tumbled in the closing minutes, Leclerc’s troubles continued as he managed only 10th while Sainz was fifth ahead of surprise packages Ricciardo of RB, Albon and Haas’s Hulkenberg with Hamilton also battling to stay competitive.

The 39-year-old Briton spun at Turn Nine with five minutes remaining. 

Perez, fighting for form and his future with Red Bull, also struggled and was down in 13th, eight-tenths off the pace.

Passenger crowds had swelled at airports on Friday as dozens of flights were cancelled after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.

By Saturday, officials said the situation had returned virtually to normal in airports across Germany and France, as Paris prepared to welcome millions for the Olympic Games starting on Friday.

Multiple US airlines and airports across Asia said they had resumed operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and mostly back to normal in India, Indonesia and at Singapore’s Changi Airport as of Saturday afternoon.

– CrowdStrike apologises –

Microsoft estimated Saturday that 8.5 million Windows devices were affected in the global IT crash, adding that the number amounted to less than one percent of all Windows machines.

“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services”, it said.

Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software.

In a Saturday blog post, CrowdStrike said it had released an update on Thursday night that caused a system crash and the infamous “blue screen of death” fatal error message.

CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem, and the company’s boss, George Kurtz, told US news channel CNBC he wanted to “personally apologise to every organisation, every group and every person who has been impacted”.

The company also said it could take a few days for a full return to normal.

Reports from the Netherlands and Britain suggested health services might have been affected by the disruption, meaning the full impact might not yet be known.

Media companies were also hit, with Britain’s Sky News saying the glitch had ended its Friday morning news broadcasts, and Australia’s ABC similarly reporting major difficulties. 

Australian, British and German authorities warned of an increase in scam and phishing attempts following the outage, including people offering to help reboot computers and asking for personal information or credit card details.

Banks in Kenya and Ukraine reported issues with their digital services, while some mobile phone carriers were disrupted and customer services in a number of companies went down.

“The scale of this outage is unprecedented, and will no doubt go down in history,” said Junade Ali of Britain’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, adding that the last incident approaching the same scale was in 2017.

– Flight chaos –

While some airports halted all flights, in others airline staff resorted to manual check-ins for passengers, leading to long lines and frustrated travellers.

Thousands of US flights were grounded, although airlines later said they were re-establishing their services and working through the backlog. 

A senior US administration official said Friday that “our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains”.

India’s largest airline Indigo said Saturday that operations had been “resolved”, adding in a statement on X that the process of resuming normal operations would “extend into the weekend”.

Low-cost carrier AirAsia said it was still trying to get back online and had been “working around the clock towards recovering its departure control systems”.

Chinese state media said Beijing’s airports had not been affected. 

– ‘Common cause’ –

Companies were left patching up their systems and trying to assess the damage, even as officials tried to tamp down panic by ruling out foul play.

According to CrowdStrike’s Saturday blog, the issue was “not the result of or related to a cyberattack”.

Although CrowdStrike had rolled out a fix, many experts questioned the ease of such a process.

“While experienced users can implement the workaround, expecting millions to do so is impractical,” said Oli Buckley, a professor at Britain’s Loughborough University.

Other experts said the incident should prompt a widespread reconsideration of how reliant societies are on a handful of tech companies. 

“We need to be aware that such software can be a common cause of failure for multiple systems at the same time,” said John McDermid, a professor at York University in Britain.

He said infrastructure should be designed “to be resilient against such common cause problems”.

by Joseph BOYLE with AFP bureaus

Around 200 people had entered the La Pallice port terminal at dawn, including farmers with old tractors, setting up a street party with music and drinks outside a major grain trader’s facility.

More than a dozen police vans and an armoured vehicle pushed them out during the morning in a cloud of tear gas, while other police vehicles blocked off access to the port.

The protest in the city on France’s Atlantic coast was intended to show that new “reservoirs aren’t being built to grow food locally, but to feed international markets,” said Julien Le Guet, a spokesman for the Bassines Non Merci (Reservoirs, No Thanks) movement.

Activists charge that the reservoirs, set to be filled from aquifers in winter to provide summer irrigation, benefit only large farmers at the expense of smaller operations and the environment.

Several dozen are under construction in western France, with backers saying that without them farms risk vanishing as they suffer through repeated droughts.

Last year, mass clashes between thousands of demonstrators and police in Sainte-Soline, around 90 kilometres (56 miles) inland from La Rochelle, left two protesters in a coma and injured 30 officers.

France’s top court later overturned an attempted government ban on the Soulevements de la Terre (Uprisings of the Earth, SLT) group involved in organising the protests.

Throughout this week more than 3,000 police have been deployed around a “Water Village” protest camp in Melle, a few kilometres from Sainte-Soline, with authorities warning of a risk of “great violence”.

Organisers of two Saturday marches in La Rochelle itself — banned by city authorities — said they rallied around 6,000 people, with police numbering them at 3,500.

“Many individuals are equipped with balaclavas and protective masks,” a police source told AFP, while the local prefecture warned that “several hundred radical individuals” were on the scene.

Some bus shelters, an insurance office and a supermarket were damaged and five people arrested by early afternoon.

The law enforcement response was “totally out of proportion,” said Agnes Denis, who had travelled from Dijon in eastern France to join the protest with her partner.

“People’s voices need to be heard, because if it’s stopped every time we’ll end up with a brawl, and that’s not what we’re here for,” she added.

Iryna Farion, 60, briefly served as a member of Ukraine’s parliament for the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party and routinely attracted controversy for chiding officials and military personnel for speaking Russian.

“It has emerged that Iryna Farion died in hospital. Doctors did everything possible, but her injury was incompatible with life,” Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said in a post on Telegram late Friday.

“I always say that there is no safe place in Ukraine anymore. But to have such a brazen, audacious murder. The killer must be found,” he said.

An unknown gunman is thought to have shot Farion at around 7:30 pm local time (1630 GMT) on Friday evening, according to the office of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General.

“The victim was taken to hospital in a critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head,” it said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he had received reports of Farion’s assassination and that “all available surveillance cameras” were being checked.

All lines of enquiry are being investigated, “including one leading to Russia,” he added.

Farion was a trained linguist and one of the most vociferous defenders of the Ukrainian language, losing her job as a professor at a Lviv university after saying she could “not call” soldiers who spoke Russian Ukrainians.

She was later reinstated following a court ruling in Lviv, in the west of the country.

Since becoming independent in 1991, Ukraine has made legislative efforts to promote its national language, which was suppressed and often sidelined in favour of Russian during Soviet rule.

Ukrainian is the language of the majority of the country but many residents still speak Russian as their mother tongue.

Iryna Farion, 60, briefly served as a member of Ukraine’s parliament for the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party and routinely attracted controversy for chiding officials and military personnel for speaking Russian.

“It has emerged that Iryna Farion died in hospital. Doctors did everything possible, but her injury was incompatible with life,” Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said in a post on Telegram late Friday.

“I always say that there is no safe place in Ukraine anymore. But to have such a brazen, audacious murder. The killer must be found,” he said.

An unknown gunman is thought to have shot Farion at around 7:30 pm local time (1630 GMT) on Friday evening, according to the office of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General.

“The victim was taken to hospital in a critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head,” it said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he had received reports of Farion’s assassination and that “all available surveillance cameras” were being checked.

All lines of enquiry are being investigated, “including one leading to Russia,” he added.

Farion was a trained linguist and one of the most vociferous defenders of the Ukrainian language, losing her job as a professor at a Lviv university after saying she could “not call” soldiers who spoke Russian Ukrainians.

She was later reinstated following a court ruling in Lviv, in the west of the country.

Since becoming independent in 1991, Ukraine has made legislative efforts to promote its national language, which was suppressed and often sidelined in favour of Russian during Soviet rule.

Ukrainian is the language of the majority of the country but many residents still speak Russian as their mother tongue.

It was the latest in a series of clashes at the site in a deprived northern suburb of the Irish capital over the past week.

Police said a planned public gathering at the site on Friday initially “passed off peacefully” before turning into an “incident of public disorder”.

A fire broke out at the building site, with police subjected to “both verbal and physical abuse including rocks, concrete bricks and other objects being thrown at them”, they said in a statement.

The Garda — Ireland’s national police force — said officers used pepper spray and batons to “defend themselves”.

Three officers who were injured were “recovering” on Saturday, according to a police update.

A man in his 20s arrested on Friday was later released without charge.

Irish Minister for Justice Helen McEntee condemned the clashes on social media, saying that “a small minority of individuals are inciting violence and fear in an attempt to divide our communities.”

“I utterly condemn the attacks we have seen on Gardai in Coolock. An attack on a member of An Garda Siochana is a serious criminal offence which carries a prison sentence of up to 12 years,” McEntee said in a statement on X.

The unrest came just days after violence broke out at the site for the planned accommodation in a former paint factory in the Coolock area.

It is intended to house around 500 asylum seekers.

On Monday, at least 21 people were arrested after police cars were attacked and machinery set on fire.

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris called Monday’s violence “reprehensible” and “criminal”.

The latest violence comes amid rising far-right sentiment as the government struggles to respond to a surge in asylum-seeker arrivals and a wider housing shortage.

Last November, central Dublin was engulfed by riots after far-right social media accounts incited protests following a knife attack on schoolchildren by an Irish citizen from an immigrant background.

Arson attacks have also increased on buildings around Ireland planned for accommodating asylum seekers, with several dozen fires at such properties since 2023.