Watching news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. comic book editor Scott Dunbier felt compelled to help. He reached out to comic book professionals to create “Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds” to raise funds to provide emergency supplies and services to Ukrainians. Genia Dulot has this report. …
Poland’s president announced Tuesday that the country would hold its parliamentary election on Oct. 15, marking the official start of an electoral campaign that has informally been underway for months and is being shaped by Russia’s war against Ukraine. President Andrzej Duda said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the elections for the 460-seat lower house of parliament, the Sejm, and for the 100-seat Senate will both take place on that Sunday. Lawmakers will be elected for a four-year term. The election campaign begins during rising anxieties in Poland over the presence of Russia-linked Wagner …
Now that July’s sizzling numbers are all in, the European climate monitoring organization made it official: July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month on record by a wide margin. July’s global average temperature of 16.95 degrees Celsius (62.51 degrees Fahrenheit) was a third of a degree Celsius (six tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) higher than the previous record set in 2019, Copernicus Climate Change Service, a division of the European Union’s space program, announced Tuesday. Normally global temperature records are broken by hundredths or a tenth of a degree, so this margin is unusual. “These records have dire consequences …
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: At least seven people killed in two Russian missile strikes in eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk Monday evening The Ukrainian Security Service said Monday that it had detained a Russian informant aiming to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy while he was visiting the Mykolaiv region in July. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba requested ATACMS long-range missiles in a phone call Monday with his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken. Rescuers in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk are digging through the rubble of several buildings destroyed by two back-to-back Russian missile attacks Monday that killed at least seven people. Pokrovsk is located …
A Moscow court sentenced Russian writer Dmitry Glukhovsky on Monday to eight years in prison, finding him guilty of deliberately spreading false information about Russia’s armed forces. Glukhovsky, who is not in Russia and who was tried in absentia, is best known for writing a science fiction series and is the latest artist to be handed a prison term in a relentless crackdown on dissent in Russia. On Friday, imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was convicted on charges of extremism and sentenced to 19 years in prison. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, lawmakers passed a bill that imposes prison …
London’s Brick Lane, famed for its street art, appears to be the scene of the latest face-off between pro-democracy supporters and Chinese loyal to President Xi Jinping’s rule. Over the weekend, big red Chinese characters painted on a white background, extolled “core socialist values,” sentiments first expressed by Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, and embraced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Most of the slogans have since been covered by anti-CCP sentiments, and a Chinese student who led the sloganeers says he has received death threats. Early on Saturday, people whitewashed a section of the street art wall, then spray painted …
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Russian shelling in Kherson and Kharkiv killed at least three people and wounded three others. The Ukrainian Security Service said Monday that it had detained a Russian informant aiming to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy while he was visiting the Mykolaiv region in July. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba requested ATACMS long-range missiles in a phone call Monday with his U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken. Talks aimed at restoring peace in Ukraine held this past weekend in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, dealt a “huge blow” to Russia as the participants agreed to a follow-up meeting, presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak …
The use of sophisticated spyware to hack into the devices of journalists and human rights defenders during a period of conflict in Armenia has alarmed analysts. A joint investigation by digital rights organizations, including Amnesty International, found evidence of the surveillance software on devices belonging to 12 people, including a former government spokesperson. The apparent targeting took place between October 2020 and December 2022, including during key moments in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Amnesty reported. The region has been at the center of a decades-long dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have fought two wars over the mountainous territory. Elina Castillo …
The European Union and NATO began sending urgent aid Monday to Slovenia after severe flooding over the weekend affecting two-thirds of the small European country killed at least six people and left hundreds homeless. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke by phone with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob on Monday, expressing his sympathy and NATO’s strong solidarity with Slovenia, a NATO statement said. “I express my deepest condolences to the people of Slovenia for the loss of life and widespread devastation caused by this weekend’s floods,” Stoltenberg said. On Sunday, Slovenia and Cyprus activated a European Union Civil Protection Mechanism …
A small group of asylum-seekers has been moved onto a barge moored in southern England as the U.K. government tries to cut the cost of sheltering people seeking protection in the country, British news media reported Monday. The asylum-seekers were transferred to the Bibby Stockholm, a floating hostel that will ultimately house up to 500 men, from other sites around the country. More were expected to arrive later Monday as authorities seek to reduce the number of asylum-seekers housed in expensive hotel rooms that were requisitioned on an emergency basis as the number of arrivals has surged in recent years. …
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Russian shelling in Kherson and Kharkiv has killed at least three people total and wounded three others U.K. Defense Ministry says attacks by Russian air forces are waning in effectiveness in latest assessment of war Russia called the Jeddah peace talks on Ukraine a doomed attempt by the West to rally the Global South behind Kyiv, the state news agency TASS reported. A Ukrainian woman was killed in Russian attacks on the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, local officials said. Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on his Telegram messaging app account that the shelling had started around …
England won without star Lauren James, who was ejected with a red card, to beat Nigeria on penalty kicks Monday and advance to the quarterfinals at the Women’s World Cup. The round of 16 match ended 0-0 after regulation and extra time, giving Nigeria a chance to win a knockout match at the Women’s World Cup for the first time in nine trips to the global tournament. But European champion England won the shootout 4-2, missing only one attempt. England became the title favorite after the defending champion U.S. team was eliminated Sunday in a penalty shootout loss to Sweden. …
More than 1,000 firefighters were on Sunday battling a wildfire in central Portugal that has destroyed 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of land and slightly injured 11 people. Temperatures were above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some regions of Portugal and authorities said wildfire risks would remain “very high or at maximum level across the entire country” over the coming days. Around 7,000 hectares were destroyed in the district of Castelo Branco in the center of the country but the commander of the firefighting operation, Jose Gulherme, said the potential risk from the blaze could be as high as “more …
Dust and rubble fill the street as an excavator tears off chunks of concrete from an old apartment building. Bystanders and former residents watch from afar as construction equipment tears down the structure. Among the bystanders is Ibrahim Ozaydin, 30, a former resident. He watches the demolition not with worry, but with relief, as his building was marked by officials as unsafe months ago. Ozaydin and his family were shocked to learn that the municipality deemed his building uninhabitable. “We decided to build our own house,” he told The Associated Press as he watched his former home being torn down. …
Iraq on Sunday called on the United States and Britain to extradite former officials accused of facilitating the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds in one of the country’s biggest-ever corruption cases. Iraq’s judiciary issued arrest warrants at the beginning of March for four men, including a former finance minister and staff members of former Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi, who Baghdad says all live outside the country. Haider Hanoun, the head of the Iraqi Commission for Integrity, called Sunday on “competent authorities in the United States and the United Kingdom to cooperate in executing the arrest warrants issued against …
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: At least 50% of the 30,000 Russian paratroopers deployed to Ukraine in 2022 have likely been killed or wounded, the U.K. Defense Ministry wrote in its intelligence update on Aug. 6. Russia called the Jeddah peace talks on Ukraine a doomed attempt by the West to rally the Global South behind Kyiv, the state news agency TASS reported. Russia has military and technical capabilities to eliminate threats to security in the Black Sea, the TASS news agency quoted Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov saying Sunday. His comments came after Ukrainian sea drones attacked a Russian warship near …
Dozens of migrants were dramatically rescued by Italy as they foundered in the sea or clung to a rocky reef Sunday after three boats launched by smugglers from northern Africa shipwrecked in rough waters in separate incidents over the weekend. Survivors said some 30 fellow migrants were missing from capsized vessels. In a particularly risky operation, two helicopters battled strong winds to pluck to safety, one by one, migrants stranded for nearly two days on a steep, rocky reef of tiny Lampedusa island. Firefighters said all the migrants, including a child, who had been clinging to the rocks after their …
Lina Hurtig’s converted her penalty and Sweden knocked the United States out of the World Cup 5-4 on penalties after a scoreless draw at the Women’s World Cup. U.S. goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher fruitlessly argued she had saved Hurtig’s attempt, but it was ruled over the line. The stadium played Abba’s “Dancing Queen in the stadium as the Swedes celebrated. The United States, which has a record four World Cup titles overall and was trying to win an unprecedented third consecutive tile, was eliminated in the Round of 16 for the first time in team history. The Americans’ worst finish had …
The death toll from a landslide that hit a resort area in the mountains of the country of Georgia increased to 17, officials and news reports said Saturday, on the third day of a search and rescue operation. The landslide hit the Shovi area on Thursday. Shovi, about 140 kilometers (85 miles) northwest of the capital Tbilisi, is popular for its mineral springs and rugged mountain vistas and contains cottages and small hotels. The head of the Georgian Internal Affairs Ministry’s Emergency Management Service, Temur Mgebrishvili, confirmed the death of 17 people and noted that 18 people were still unaccounted …
During Europe’s heat wave last month, Floriana Peroni’s vintage clothing store had to close for a week. A truck of rented generators blocked her door as they fed power to the central Roman neighborhood hit by a blackout as temperatures surged. The main culprit: air conditioning. The period — in which temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) — coincided with peak electricity use that came close to Italy’s all-time high, hitting a peak load of more than 59 gigawatts on July 19. That neared a July 2015 record. Intensive electricity use knocked out the network not only near …