International

Bangladeshi students battled police for control of the streets and won, but if their country is to embark on a new journey, someone has to clear the road ahead.Gridlock is a fact of life in the capital Dhaka, a megacity of 20 million which relies on a corps of police wardens to clear long snarls of cars and pedal rickshaws through intersections.With officers on strike after the resignation of ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, the students who forced her ouster have stepped up to do the job themselves."Our country can't remain in a standstill," Nasrin Akter Koly, 21, told AFP."We clashed with the police, that's why the police are not on duty," she added. "So instead of the police, our people must do the work."Traffic control is a humdrum job at the best of times and many of Dhaka's usual wardens are known for a casual indifference to aggressive drivers zooming by out of turn.But Koly and her classmates have brought a new enthusiasm to the vocation as they wave through cars at one of the downtown business district's busiest crossroads.Drivers are in turn treating the volunteers with respect.Nearly all are stopping on command and heeding polite but firm directions to fasten their seatbelts -- the kind of minor traffic infraction that would have previously been ignored."After a revolution, every country faces some difficulties," said Nahid Kalam Nabil, 22, while directing traffic alongside Koly."The students are handling the situation now, and they will keep the country safe," he added.More than 450 people were killed during weeks of clashes between protesters and security forces before Hasina quit and fled to India on Monday.Protests had been largely peaceful until police attempted to violently disperse them, setting in motion the chain of events that led to the end of Hasina's iron-fisted 15-year tenure.Dozens of police officers were killed in the unrest, according to police and hospital figures given to AFP.After her departure, vandalism and arson attacks hit roughly 450 of the country's 600 police stations, according to the force.Police unions declared a national strike on Tuesday "until the security" of officers was assured, and a new police chief apologised for the conduct of officers under his sacked predecessor.Unrest has since subsided, thanks in part to students volunteering for neighbourhood watch patrols and guarding houses of worship for minority religions, which were subjected to isolated looting attacks."They are safeguarding the houses at night, they are safeguarding the mosques, temples and churches," Nabil said."They are teaching the people law and order. They are designing the country in a new way."Many police officers began returning to work Friday with soldiers -- held in high esteem for not intervening on Hasina's side during the unrest -- standing guard.Farida Akhter, a member of the interim government tasked with steering democratic reforms, told AFP that restoring law and order was the "first priority" of the new dispensation.The sudden collapse of Hasina's administration left a gaping vacuum in political administration, with many civil servants staying home waiting for the dust to settle.The city government in Dhaka has also laid low, prompting other student volunteers to take on its duties."With this students' protest, we have made a fascist regime fall," 20-year-old Samanjar Chowdhury Mrittika told AFP while wielding a broom to sweep up garbage from a downtown sidewalk."The country is not in a good condition," she added. "Someone must take responsibility."

HE the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Lieutenant General (Pilot) Salem bin Hamad bin Aqeel Al Nabet met with the Chief of Defense Staff of the Swedish Forces General Michael Claesson.The meeting dealt with discussing issues of joint interest as well as military bilateral cooperation and the means to enhance it.The meeting was attended by HE the Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the Kingdom of Sweden Nadia bint Ahmad Al Sheebi and a number of ranking officers at the Qatari Armed Forces.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called for an end to the fighting in Gaza, saying France was lending its "full support" to mediation efforts in the war between Israel and Hamas."The war in Gaza must stop," Macron wrote on X. "This must be clear to everyone."An end of hostilities was "crucial for the people of Gaza, for the hostages, and for the stability of the region, which is at stake today", he wrote.On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said that Israel had agreed to resume Gaza ceasefire talks on August 15 at the request of US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators.US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have endeavoured to secure a second truce in the 10-month-old war sparked by Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.The three countries invited the warring parties to resume talks on August 15 in Doha or Cairo "to close all remaining gaps and commence implementation of the deal without further delay".Macron said the American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators had "full support from France"

,UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Friday that authorities "have to stay on high alert going into this weekend", amid fears of further far-right riots in English towns and cities.Starmer said the work by the criminal justice system in recent days, including judges swiftly handing down lengthy jail sentences to some rioters, had acted as a deterrent to more violence.His comments came after two nights of relative quiet across England, after a week of near nightly unrest in more than a dozen towns and cities in the wake of a deadly knife attack that killed three children.Disturbances have continued unabated in Northern Ireland, however, where police have blamed pro-UK loyalist paramilitaries for fuelling nightly violence in Belfast."I'm absolutely convinced that having the police officers in place these last few days, and the swift justice that has been dispensed in our courts have had a real impact," Starmer told UK broadcasters about the situation in England."But we have to stay on high alert going into this weekend because we absolutely have to make sure that our communities are safe and secure and feel safe and secure."Speaking during a visit to the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police, he said potential unrest caused by the start of the football season would be "added into the mix" of challenges facing police this weekend.Some far-right rioters and agitators are believed to have links to England's decades-old football hooligan scene, which has diminished since its heyday in the 1980s but can still see violence on match days.Police in England said Thursday that forces nationwide had now arrested nearly 500 people for alleged participation in the unrest that began on July 30, while around a dozen people were jailed on Thursday for involvement.The disturbances, first sparked by a July 29 knife attack that killed three children, have seen mosques and migrant-related facilities attacked alongside police and other targets.Officials have blamed misinformation spread on social media about the suspected perpetrator for fuelling the disorder.

Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Oraloglu has announced the opening of Cukurova International Airport in the south of the country on August 10.The Minister noted that the new airport will be the 58th civilian airport in Turkiye. He added that the airport will serve 5 million people, given its location close to as it is near to Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye and Nigde.He said that the widest aircraft can land on the airport's main runway, which is 3,500 meters long and 60 meters wide.The airport's capacity is 8 million passengers annually, and its hall area is 110,000 square meters, he added.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said that he is willing to debate his Democratic rival Kamala Harris three times in September on different networks during a news conference yesterday at his Palm Beach, Florida, residence.Trump said he wanted to hold debates on September 4 on Fox, September 10 on NBC, and September 25 on ABC.He did not offer specific terms, such as whether there would be an audience, and it was not immediately clear whether his campaign had made a proposal to Harris’s camp.The conference was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.Harris, the US vice-president, and Walz headlined rallies in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, drawing tens of thousands of attendees in a fresh sign of how her late entry into the race has galvanised Democrats.Her rapid rise, following President Joe Biden’s decision last month to abandon his faltering campaign, has sent Trump’s team scrambling to recalibrate their strategy and messaging.Opinion polls show Harris has erased the lead Trump had built over Biden, and Democrats have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from voters and big donors in a matter of weeks.Harris and Walz were scheduled to meet with auto workers in Detroit yesterday, following the United Auto Workers union’s endorsement of their candidacy, as part of a push to mobilise blue-collar workers in key battleground states.The Harris campaign cancelled events yesterday in North Carolina and today in Georgia, where Tropical Storm Debby is bringing heavy rain and dangerous flooding.The Democrats will head to Arizona and Nevada later this week, visiting two more swing states likely to play a key role in the November 5 election.Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, also cancelled campaign events in North Carolina yesterday due to the storm.He has spent the last few days trailing Harris and Walz around the country, an unusual move intended to provide a “contrast”, he told reporters on Wednesday.The Trump campaign has criticised the Democrat vice-president for not taking questions from reporters since launching her campaign 2-1/2 weeks ago.Trump has conducted a steady stream of media interviews, though they are usually with friendly, right-leaning outlets and reporters.On Wednesday, he called into the Fox & Friends morning programme and took questions from the programme’s hosts.Biden has meanwhile warned that he is “not confident at all” of a peaceful handover of power to Harris if Trump loses November’s election, in an extract of a CBS interview broadcast on Wednesday.The president said Trump’s hints on the campaign trail about not accepting a defeat should be taken seriously.“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden told the US network in the interview, which was due to air fully on Sunday, when asked if he believed there would be a calm transfer in January 2025.“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it – all the stuff about ‘if we lose there’ll be a bloodbath,’” added Biden.While campaigning earlier this year, Biden regularly brought up the fact that Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after Biden beat him in the 2020 election.Biden also frequently quoted Trump as saying there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost – although the Republican said he was talking in the context of electric car imports from China.Trump has, however, maintained his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and in the CBS interview Biden accused the former president of trying to install allies in key electoral positions in US states to manipulate counts if the same thing happened again.“You can’t love your country only when you win,” said Biden.The ageing president has long framed Trump as a threat to US democracy.Harris has sometimes echoed that theme, while focusing more on a positive vision in a campaign that has reenergised Democrats, brought in millions of dollars and helped her nose ahead of Trump in opinion polls.In the news conference at his residence yesterday, Trump said that there would be a peaceful transfer of power after the US presidential vote – but immediately questioned whether there would be “honest elections”.“Of course there’ll be a peaceful transfer, and there was last time,” Trump told a news conference, despite a mob of his supporters storming Congress in 2021 after his loss. “I just hope we’re going to have honest elections.”

Like thousands of Gaza children, Yasmine al-Shanbari, 3, is not only suffering from the upheaval of war all around them. She is ravaged by skin disease and no relief is in sight, with medicine scarce and few hospitals functioning in the Israeli-besieged enclave.The 10-month-old war between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas has left the Gaza Strip with no clean running water, a shortage of aid and medicine and raw sewage everywhere, giving rise to skin diseases and other afflictions. Red scratchy patches have spread all over Yasmine’s face and her father feels helpless as she sits in his lap in a burnt-out, crowded school where they have taken shelter in the Jabalia urban refugee camp in north Gaza.Tiny little insects were visibly flitting around her face, while piles of garbage rotted in the high summer heat outside.“The disease she has on her face has been there for almost 10 days now and hasn’t gone away,” said her father, Ahmed al-Shanbari. “We did not leave out any medicine to give to her, hoping it will clear up from her face.” The death toll continues to climb in Gaza, with almost 40,000 Palestinians killed, according to Gaza authorities. Skin diseases are not the only illnesses that are creeping into one of the most densely populated places on earth.“Yesterday, we were talking about hepatitis, and today we are talking about contagious skin diseases. Every day there are new diseases spreading among children,” said Dr Wissam al-Sakani, spokesman for Kamal Adwan Hospital.The World Health Organisation (WHO) has sounded the alarm that Hepatitis A and polio are also spreading among children. “UN agencies warned of the high risk of the further spread of infectious diseases in Gaza, amid chronic water scarcity and no way to adequately manage waste and sewage,” it said in a report earlier this month.“The waste management system in Gaza has collapsed. Piles of trash are accumulating in the scorching summer heat. Sewage discharges on the streets while people queue for hours just to go to the toilets.”Israel denies responsibility for delays in getting urgent humanitarian aid into Gaza, says the UN and others are responsible for its distribution once inside the enclave.Ammar al-Mashharawi, a 2-year-old toddler, also has a fiery red rash all over his face and body in Kamal Adwan Hospital, which was struck by Israeli missiles in May.“Look at the child, his whole body is like this. We have been to more than one hospital to find medicine for him,” said Ammar’s father Ahmed as he held his wailing son while medical staff checked him. “We adults manage somehow, but the children, God help them, have no food or medicine. The situation is indescribable,” Ahmed added.

Somalia’s cabinet yesterday endorsed legislation to allow a one-person-one-vote election system that was hailed as a “historic” step for the troubled Horn of Africa nation. The law aims to replace a complex clan-based indirect voting system that has been in place since 1969, when the dictator Siad Barre seized power.“The national elections law will direct the country to (hold) one-person-one vote elections,” Somali government spokesman Farhan Jimale told a media briefing. Somalia is struggling to emerge from decades of conflict and chaos, battling a bloody insurgency and frequent natural disasters as well as internal political feuds.The election plans were first unveiled in 2023 following a National Consultative Forum set up to discuss political reforms, with the system to be introduced with nationwide local ballots initially due to take place in June this year.But the reforms ran into headwinds with leading Somali politicians saying they lacked the full support of all federal states, particularly the semi-autonomous state of Puntland which has long been at odds with the central government in Mogadishu. Jimale said the cabinet of Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre had unanimously approved the legislation, and another law governing which parties can take part in elections, describing it as “historic”.“(It) will give every Somali citizen the constitutional right to vote for a leader of their choice,” he added. However, the laws will have to go to parliament for approval before they can be officially signed into law by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Clan affiliations have been the organising principle of Somalia’s politics, with influential roles such as speaker, prime minister and president divided among the main groups.State legislatures and clan delegates have also picked lawmakers for the national parliament, who in turn choose the president. But clan rivalries have resulted in decades of strife and political wrangling, which in recent years have been exploited by the Al Shebaab militants linked to Al Qaeda.Universal suffrage is already in place in the breakaway region of Somaliland, which declared independence in 1991 but has never been recognised internationally. In May 2023, the semi-autonomous state of Puntland held local polls by direct ballot, but rolled back on plans to use the system again for local and regional elections in January this year.And in March, it announced it would no longer recognise federal institutions after parliament backed the one-person, one-vote plan. There has yet to be any reaction from the Puntland authorities to yesterday’s announcement. Al Shebaab, which has been fighting an insurgency against the fragile government, has sought to disrupt past elections with attacks.The federal government in 2022 joined forces with local clans to fight the militants in an offensive supported by an African Union peacekeeping force and US air strikes. The force is due to hand over security to the Somali army and police at the end of this year, and has been slowly drawing down its troops. But the AU said this week said it had endorsed a new mission to be known as the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) with troop contributions from Egypt and Djibouti.

Police fired tear gas to clear pockets of anti-government demonstrators from the centre of Kenya’s capital Nairobi yesterday, as their protest movement sought to capitalise on earlier concessions and compel President William Ruto to resign.The “Nane Nane” march, meaning “eight eight” in reference to the date, follows weeks of similar pro-reform protests that saw Ruto scrap planned tax hikes and overhaul his cabinet.The youth-led nationwide protests began peacefully in June before turning violent, and more than 50 people have been killed.Shops were shut and streets left deserted after riot police set up road blocks and threw tear gas canisters to disperse handfuls of protesters across Nairobi’s financial district. Police fired tear gas at one group of a dozen protesters chanting “Ruto must go”, a Reuters journalist reported.The police arrested 174 people across the country including 126 in Nairobi, acting inspector general Gilbert Masengeli said in a statement. At least three journalists were wounded when police fired tear gas canisters close to them, the International Press Association of East Africa, which represents hundreds of journalists in the region, said on X.Police also raided the home of opposition financier and presidential hopeful Jimi Wanjigi, his lawyer Willis Otieno told Reuters in a message. “He seems to have been placed under house arrest illegally,” Otieno said. Masengeli said officers had discovered teargas canisters and communications equipment in a car at Wanjigi’s home. He did not say whether Wanjigi was amongst those arrested, or explain how the raid was linked to the protests. In what has been the biggest crisis of his two years in office, Ruto bowed to pressure and shelved the new taxes in June after some demonstrators briefly stormed parliament.Ruto fired his entire cabinet apart from the foreign minister last month, a victory for activists and protesters who had demanded sweeping changes. Ruto then named opposition members to his cabinet, but activists criticised the move as a corrupt deal and reiterated demands that he resign. They called for far-reaching reforms to tackle corruption and for regional county and national governments to improve service delivery.Ruto has said the new cabinet reflects national unity and will address the demands of the protest movement. He has promised to investigate alleged abuses by the police during demonstrations but has broadly defended their conduct. Ruto’s reconstituted cabinet was sworn in on Thursday.“Where Kenya is today, while competition is healthy and good, there is a moment where the interest of a nation is greater than the interest of a political formation,” he said in a speech after the ministers were sworn in. The protests have no official leaders and have been mostly organised online. Ruto has stepped up criticism of them after initially praising demonstrators for being peaceful.“We are a proudly democratic country, based on the firm foundation of the rule of law. There is no room for anarchy, chaos and violence,” Ruto said in Embu County on Wednesday. The Kenyan police asked people to avoid crowded areas ahead of yesterday’s protests and said it was deploying adequate personnel across the country.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed Yunus was sworn into office yesterday, vowing to lead Bangladesh back to democracy after a student-led uprising ended the 15-year rule of Sheikh Hasina.Yunus, who earlier yesterday had hailed the overthrow of Hasina as Bangladesh’s “second independence”, swore to “uphold, support and protect the constitution”, in front of political and civil society leaders, generals and diplomats at the presidential palace.“Today is a glorious day for us,” Yunus, 84, told reporters hours earlier when he returned to Dhaka from Europe.“Bangladesh has created a new victory day. Bangladesh has got a second independence.”Yunus called for the restoration of order after weeks of violence that left at least 455 people dead, calling on citizens to guard each other, including minorities who came under attack.“Law and order is our first task... We cannot take a step forward unless we fix the law and order situation,” he said.“My call to the people is if you have trust in me, then make sure there will be no attacks against anyone, anywhere in the country.”“Every person is our brother... our task is to protect them,” Yunus said, adding that “the whole of Bangladesh is one big family”.More than a dozen members of his cabinet, who are titled advisers, not ministers, also took the oath.They included top leaders of the Students Against Discrimination group that led the weeks-long protests, Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud.Others included a former foreign secretary and a former attorney general, an environmental lawyer, and prominent rights activist Adilur Rahman Khan who was sentenced to two years in jail during Hasina’s rule.Hasina, accused of widespread human rights abuses including jailing of political opponents, was forced to flee to neighbouring India on Monday as masses of protesters flooded Dhaka’s streets. The military then agreed to student demands that Yunus – who won the Nobel in 2006 for his pioneering microfinancing work – lead an interim government.Yunus choked with emotion yesterday as he recalled the killing of student activist Abu Sayeed, shot dead in July by police from close range.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer yesterday vowed not to ease up efforts to stop further far-right riots in English towns and cities, after more anticipated street violence failed to materialise overnight.The UK leader said despite a largely peaceful Wednesday evening, he would chair another emergency meeting of senior ministers and police leaders to plan for potential trouble in “the coming days”.He also noted the criminal justice system would continue “working speedily” to convict those already arrested during a week of near nightly riots across England and in Northern Ireland.It came as a judge in Liverpool, northeast England, jailed several more participants in the violence, which has seen mosques and migrant-related facilities attacked alongside police and other targets.“It’s important that we don’t let up here,” Starmer told media outlets as he visited a mosque and met community leaders in Solihull, western England.Starmer credited “police deployed in numbers in the right places, giving reassurance to communities” with helping to ease the unrest overnight.Instead of rumoured far-right gatherings at dozens of sites linked to immigrant support services, thousands of anti-racism and anti-facism protesters took to the streets.They massed in considerable numbers, holding rallies in cities including London, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and Newcastle.“Whose streets? Our streets!” thousands chanted in Walthamstow, northeast London, where hundreds of pro-Palestine supporters joined the rally under a heavy police presence.However, Northern Ireland saw another night of disturbances -- its fourth in a row.There were five arrests and a police officer was injured during disorder in Belfast.The UK government had put 6,000 specialist police on standby across England to deal with scores of potential flashpoints, after far-right social media channels called for a string of immigration-linked sites to be targeted.The violence has been fuelled by misinformation spread on social media about the suspected perpetrator of a knife attack on July 29 which killed three children.London’s Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley, who ordered thousands of officers onto the streets of the capital on Wednesday, said he was “really pleased” with how the police and local communities had responded to the riots.

Russian forces were battling Ukrainian troops for a third day yesterday after they smashed through the Russian border in the Kursk region, an audacious attack on the world’s biggest nuclear power that has forced Moscow to call in reserves.In one of the biggest Ukrainian attacks on Russia of the two-year-old war, around 1,000 Ukrainian troops rammed through the Russian border in the early hours of August 6 with tanks and armoured vehicles, covered in the air by swarms of drones and pounding artillery, according to Russian officials.Heavy fighting was reported near the town of Sudzha, where Russian natural gas flows into Ukraine, raising concerns about a possible sudden stop to transit flows to Europe.The incursion has come as a shock to Russia, nearly two-and-a-half years since President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine in February 2022.Putin has cast the Ukrainian offensive as a “major provocation”.Sergei Mironov, leader of a Kremlin-loyal political party, called it a “terrorist attack” and “the invasion of an internationally recognised foreign territory”.Kursk’s regional acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said that thousands of residents had been evacuated.The White House said the United States – Ukraine’s biggest backer – had no prior knowledge of the attack and would seek more details from Kyiv.Russia’s defence ministry said yesterday that the army and the Federal Security Service (FSB) had halted the Ukrainian advance and were battling Ukrainian units in the Kursk region.“Units of the Northern group of forces, together with the FSB of Russia, continue to destroy armed formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Sudzhensky and Korenevsky districts of the Kursk region, directly adjacent to the Russian-Ukrainian border,” the ministry said.The Ukrainian military has remained silent on the Kursk offensive, though President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the Ukrainian army yesterday for its ability “to surprise” and achieve results.He did not explicitly reference Kursk.Zelensky said that Russia needed to “feel” the consequences of its war.“Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done,” he said in his evening address, without directly referring to the offensive. “Ukrainians know how to achieve their goals. And we did not choose to achieve our goals in the war.”Kyiv has not officially taken responsibility for the operation, but an aide to Zelensky said Moscow was to blame.“The root cause of any escalation, shelling, military actions, forced evacuations and destruction of normal life forms – including within the Russian Federation’s own territories like Kursk and Belgorod regions – is solely Russia’s unequivocal aggression,” presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said yesterday on social media.Some Russian bloggers said Ukraine’s forces were pushing towards the Kursk nuclear power station, which lies about 60km (37 miles) northeast of Sudzha.Yuri Podolyaka, a popular Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger, said that there were intense battles about 30km from the Soviet-era nuclear plant, which supplies a large swathe of southern Russia with power.Ukraine’s energy minister said gas transit via Sudzha was still functioning, despite reports of hostilities there.Most EU nations have reduced their dependence on Russian gas, but Austria is one country that still receives most of its gas via Ukraine.The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), a non-profit open-source analysis organisation, said it was unable to visually confirm any damage to the gas metering station as a result of the incursion, but had verified significant damage to the border checkpoint about 500m to the south.“This, combined with footage verified by CIR of several Russian soldiers surrendering to Ukrainian soldiers near the entrance of the gas metering plant, makes it likely that the plant has been affected by the Ukrainian incursion, however, the level of damage cannot be verified at this time,” it said.The battles come at a crucial juncture in the conflict, the biggest land war in Europe since World War II.Kyiv is concerned that US support could weaken if Republican Donald Trump wins the November presidential election.Trump has said he would end the war, and both Russia and Ukraine are keen to gain the strongest possible bargaining position on the battlefield.Ukraine wants to pin down Russian forces, which control 18% of its territory, though the strategic significance of the border offensive was not immediately clear.Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said the Ukrainian attack was an attempt to force Russia to divert resources from the front and to show the West that Ukraine could still fight.As a result of the Kursk attack, Medvedev said, Russia should expand its war aims to include taking all of Ukraine.“From this moment on, the SVO (Special Military Operation) should acquire an openly extraterritorial character,” Medvedev said, adding that Russian forces should go to Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mykolayiv, Kyiv “and beyond”.“We will stop only when we consider it acceptable and profitable for ourselves,” he said.

A small street in Vienna became a place of “healing” for hundreds of fans of US mega-star Taylor Swift after organisers cancelled her shows because the authorities had uncovered a religious extremist attack plot.Hundreds of Swifties gathered at Vienna’s Corneliusgasse – dear to Swift’s fans for its resemblance to her hit Cornelia Street – to chant the pop star’s songs.They wanted to lift up their spirits after missing out on their idol’s concerts, which some of them had been waiting for all year.On Wednesday, Austrian officials announced that they had foiled a suicide attack by a religious extremist who confessed that he had planned to kill “a large number of people” at one of Swift’s concerts this week.“I didn’t believe it at first, but when I realised it, I was devastated,” Veronika Doubkova told AFP.The 23-year-old student, who had travelled from the Czech Republic to attend a show, was hanging some of her friendship bracelets onto the branches of a tree located on the street.Doubkova said she felt she “didn’t come here for nothing” after experiencing the “uplifting” vibe and strong sense of “community” among the fans, some of whom were donning sequined dresses and cowboy boots – just like Swift.Dilyara Joldassova, a 23-year-old engineer, and two of her friends had travelled all the way from Kazakhstan for the concert.They learned about the cancellations while strolling through Vienna’s Prater amusement park late on Wednesday.“My heart is really broken. Everything went grey,” she told AFP.However, “safety comes first”, she said, adding that she was relieved “everyone is safe” and could gather to feel the “healing atmosphere”.All the events surrounding this week’s three cancelled concerts seem set to go ahead as planned, with police stepping up their presence and reinforcing security measures.Despite the disappointment, all Swifties interviewed by AFP said that they understood the event organisers’ decision.“I can’t even imagine what it would have been like if the attack had happened and I’d ended up telling the story of how we’d survived – if, in fact, we had survived,” Bernadett Bordas told AFP in Budapest.“I was counting down the days, playing all the concerts over and over again on the Internet,” she said.Hungarian David Banyai had already arrived in Vienna after a six-hour train ride, and was gearing up for the concert – just to find out that it wouldn’t happen.“I admit I was a bit scared because I’ve heard of other attacks on concerts by (religious extremists),” he said.He was thinking of the deadly November 2015 attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris and the 2017 fatal bombing in Manchester, England, after a show by pop star Ariana Grande.British police have meanwhile stated that there was nothing to indicate that a planned attack on a Swift concert in Vienna would have any impact on her return next week to Wembley Stadium, London, for her five final shows in Europe.Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour came to Britain in June, with shows in Edinburgh, Liverpool and Cardiff, before she visited London for three nights, with the now-prime minister, Keir Starmer, and members of the royal family in the crowd.She will return to Wembley on August 15 for five nights before heading back to North America for her final dates of Eras, which has become the highest grossing concert tour of all time, according to reports.“There is nothing to indicate that the matters being investigated by the Austrian authorities will have an impact on upcoming events here in London,” a spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said.London’s Met Police said millions of visitors had a safe and enjoyable experience at high-profile events in London every year, with Bruce Springsteen playing at Wembley in July.“The Met works closely with venue security teams and other partners to ensure there are appropriate security and policing plans in place,” the spokesperson said. “As always, we will continue to keep any new information under careful review.”

The US State Department said Washington is in contact with Ukraine over its ground incursion into the Kursk border region.US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a press conference that the Ukrainian operation "does not violate US policy on launching strikes on Russian territory."Miller said that Ukraine did not give the United States an advance warning about the operation. He stated that, "it is not unusual for the Ukrainians not to inform us of their precise tactics before they carry them out.""Ultimately, the decisions about how Ukraine conducts its military operations are its own," Miller added.Russia announced on Wednesday that it had been subjected to a major Ukrainian attempt to breach the border, through drone strikes, which were repelled.Russian President Vladimir Putin, in statements, considered the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region a major provocation, saying, "the Kiev regime has committed another major provocation," adding that Ukrainian forces are carrying out "indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets in the Kursk region.

Scientists from various Australian universities revealed today that water temperatures in and around the Great Barrier Reef have risen to their highest levels in 400 years over the past decade, threatening the world's largest coral reef.Scientists collected samples from coral reefs, studied them to measure temperatures, and used ship and satellite data dating back about 100 years.The study concluded that ocean temperatures, which had been stable for centuries, began to rise from the year 1900 as a result of the influence of human activities, and from 1960 to 2024, researchers observed an average annual increase in temperatures; starting from January to March by 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.22 degrees Fahrenheit).The Great Barrier Reef has experienced massive coral bleaching for five consecutive summers since 2016, a process in which large parts of the reef turn white due to heat stress, increasing the risk of their death. The study found that these five seasons were among the six warmest in the past four centuries.

Plans to lift an electric-powered "flying taxi" over Paris during the Olympics have been scrapped because certification for its engine has not come through, its promoters said on Thursday.German manufacturer Volocopter has been conducting test flights in the Paris region for several years and had lobbied hard for authorisation from European authorities in time for the Olympics, which end on Sunday.Its helicopter-like "Volocity" aircraft is fitted with 18 electric-powered rotors on a circular frame above the fuselage and has two seats, one for a pilot and another for a passenger.Test flights had been due to take place during the Games, landing on a float on the Seine near the Austerlitz railway station in southeastern Paris, but they will now happen in a suburban town.The company has partnered with French airport operator ADP, the capital's metro and bus operator RATP, and the Paris regional government.Certification for VoloCity has been delayed by a few weeks over its motors, ADP deputy CEO Edward Arkwright said."We are a little disappointed but in any case we had said that we would not make any compromises with security," he added.Volocopter CEO Dirk Hoke said the delay was due to "an American supplier who was not capable of providing what he had promised".He said the motors would be sent back to France next week but not in time for the test flights to be held in Paris before the Olympics close.The project already had to scale down its ambitions in recent months after it failed to get authorisation from European air safety authorities in time to carry passengers for the Paris test flights.Its promoters now aim to fly the aircraft from a floating platform on the Seine by the end of the year before the reopening of the capital's Notre Dame Cathedral in December."We are still hopeful about flying these aircraft above the Seine before Notre Dame reopens," ADP CEO Augustin de Romanet told Franceinfo radio.- Paris city opposition -De Romanet said European certification authorities asked the US supplier to make changes to the motors because they were experiencing "small vibrations".The companies had hoped to use the global draw of the Olympics to show the technology could efficiently link "vertiport" take-off and landing sites.However, test flights without passengers will be held in the aerodrome of the suburban town of Saint Cyr l'Ecole, west of Paris, on Thursday and Sunday, they said.The town is close to the Chateau de Versailles, where Olympic equestrian events are being held.Backers tout flying taxis as a low-carbon form of aviation and hope future larger versions could be used as ambulances or in other roles.However, many city officials in Paris have derided the plans as harmful to the environment.The mayor's office has tried to block the flights in court.

Hundreds of Hindus in Bangladesh were gathered along the Indian border hoping to cross, security officials said Thursday, days after a student-led uprising toppled prime minister Sheikh Hasina.Some businesses and homes owned by Hindus were attacked following Hasina's ousting, and the group is seen by some in Muslim-majority Bangladesh as having been close to her."Several hundred Bangladeshi nationals, mostly Hindus, gathered at different points along India's border with Bangladesh," Amit Kumar Tyagi, India's Border Security Force (BSF) deputy inspector general, told AFP.More than 200 people were "standing close" to the frontier with India's border in West Bengal state.In the state's Jalpaiguri district, more than 600 Bangladeshis gathered in no-man's land, Tyagi added."As there is no fence here, BSF personnel formed a human shield to keep them at bay," he said.Officers fired a blank shot into the air to disperse crowds, he added.Hasina, 76, who had been in power since 2009, quit on Monday after more than a month of deadly protests.The security situation in Bangladesh has since dramatically improved but there have been reports of revenge attacks on her supporters and party officials.The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council said earlier this week that at least 10 Hindu temples were attacked by "miscreants" on Monday.A hospital official, on condition of anonymity, told AFP that one man from the community was beaten to death in the country's southern Bagerhat district.In India, where Hasina is now taking shelter, foreign minister S. Jaishankar said Tuesday his government was "monitoring the situation" with regard to minorities.

"The European Union and several European countries strongly condemned the statement of the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in which he said, "the starvation of two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip may be just and moral."In a statement, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said "we strongly condemn the recent statements made by the Israeli Finance Minister last Monday." Borrell considered Smotrich's statement "extremely shameful". He stressed that "deliberately starving civilians is a war crime."France, for its part, expressed its "deep dismay at the outrageous remarks" made by Smotrich.A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement that "France calls on the Israeli government to condemn these unacceptable remarks in the strongest possible terms."In London, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a post on the social media platform X: "There can be no justification for Minister Smotrich's comments."Lammy called on the Israeli government to "retract and condemn his statements," adding that "deliberately starving civilians is a war crime."For its part, the German Foreign Ministry condemned Smotrich's statements.A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin said, "the statements of the Israeli Finance Minister are unacceptable and completely outrageous. We reject them in the strongest terms."The spokesman added, "it is a humanitarian duty and a basic principle of international humanitarian law that even in war, civilians must be protected and must have, for example, the right to access water and food.

The Nobel Peace laureate tapped to lead an interim government in Bangladesh called for calm and boarded a flight yesterday to return home, a day before his new government is expected to be sworn in to replace ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.Mohamed Yunus, 84, was picked by President Mohamed Shahabuddin to lead the new interim government, a key demand of student demonstrators whose uprising drove Hasina to flee to India on Monday.“Let us make the best use of our new victory,” he said in a statement before departing Paris, where he had been receiving medical treatment while out on bail from criminal cases brought under Hasina. “I fervently appeal to everybody to stay calm. Please refrain from all kinds of violence.”Outside the airport, he told reporters: “I’m looking forward to going back home and see what’s happening there and how we can organise ourselves to get out of the trouble that we’re in.“I’ll go and talk to them. I’m just fresh in this whole area,” said Yunus, an economist who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered fighting poverty with small loans to ordinary people.President Shahabuddin said the rest of the interim government needed to be finalised soon to overcome the crisis and pave the way for elections. Nahid Islam, a key student leader, said he expected the members to be chosen soon.Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said that he was hopeful the interim government would be sworn in by late today and that the situation in the country was improving and was expected to become normal in the next 3-4 days.He also said that military leaders had held discussions with student leaders, political parties, and the president and that he was confident that Yunus would be able to take the country towards a democratic process.

Kamala Harris took her breakneck presidential campaign on a tour of US election battlegrounds yesterday as she seeks to build a coalition of Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to power her to the White House.The 59-year-old vice-president has been riding a wave of excitement and an upward swing in polling in the two weeks since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate to take on Republican Donald Trump on November 5.Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will take their double act to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before travelling to Detroit, Michigan, for a rally with members of the United Auto Workers union.Just hours after Walz was announced on Tuesday, the pair held the biggest Democratic event of the election so far in front of a raucous crowd of around 14,000 in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.“We are the underdogs in this race, but we have the momentum and I know exactly what we are up against,” Harris told the crowd.Walz, a 60-year-old former Army National Guard officer, has been governor of the staunchly Democratic state of Minnesota since 2019 but before that he had a record as a congressman of winning over moderate and independent voters.Seen initially as an outsider for the VP pick, Walz enjoyed viral success in distilling Democrats’ attack lines against Republicans into a relatable one-word characterisation — “weird” — that propelled him up Harris’s shortlist. He is scheduled to appear with Harris in each of the swing states, with stops in Arizona and Nevada later in the week. Events in North Carolina and Georgia were postponed due to bad weather.Team Harris-Walz plans to have more than 750 staff on the ground in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — crucial for victory in November — when the Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago in mid-August.“Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz’s momentum across the battlegrounds, including the blue wall, is real and will be on full display today,” said Dan Kanninen, Battleground States Director for the Harris campaign.But many Republicans have voiced delight that Walz was chosen over the more centrist Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, a popular leader of a state that most pundits agree will be the biggest prize in 2024.Republicans are seeking to brand Walz as a far-left ideologue who offered benefits to undocumented migrants and tolerated rioting in the streets in 2020 after the police murder of African-American George Floyd.House Majority Leader Steve Scalise posted on X that Walz had “let rioters burn Minneapolis to the ground in 2020.”The Trump campaign itself has been accusing Walz — who retired from the National Guard in 2005 — of having “deserted” his unit just as it was being deployed to Iraq.It’s not clear how decisive the VP issue will be for either side. Trump himself acknowledged in a recent interview that “the vice president — in terms of the election — does not have any impact.... The choice of a vice president makes no difference.”Trump has declined to focus on Harris’s policy weaknesses, instead favouring personal attacks to try to halt her rise.Harris has a 51-48% lead over Trump in the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist survey and has edged ahead by 0.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics nationwide average of polls.The organisation had Trump three points ahead of Biden at the point when the president made way for Harris, 17 days ago.Where Trump used to be famed for his knack of defining his opponents with an incisive one-word sobriquet — such as “Crooked Hillary” Clinton or “Sleepy Joe” Biden — he has struggled to come up with a nickname that sticks on Harris. His latest taunt — calling her “Kamabla” — looks more like a typo than an effective insult and has left pundits scratching their heads.