Zack Polanski says he was wrong to call himself a Red Cross spokesperson

• China and Indonesia have agreed to deepen military cooperation and expand strategic ties in technology, energy, and minerals to strengthen bilateral relations amid Asian geopolitical competition. • The Dutch public broadcaster Avrotros has withdrawn from the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest, citing concerns that the event's independent and neutral character has been compromised.

Exclusive: How a court case over an unoccupied office block could end a widely used tax avoidance schemeFrom the outside, the seven-storey building at 2 America Square looks like any other office block in the heart of London’s financial district.Located about half a mile from Tower Bridge, one might expect it to be a hive of commercial activity, teeming with employees holding important meetings. However, much of the property is home not to staff vying for their next bonus, but to stacks of nondescript black boxes arranged in neat lines. Continue reading...

Andy Burnham urged to seek consensus over response to extreme heat and forthcoming ‘super El Niño’Andy Burnham should call a cross-party meeting to discuss the UK’s response to worsening extreme weather, including the forthcoming ‘super El Niño’, the Liberal Democrats have said.The prime minister chaired a Cobra emergency meeting on the drought earlier this month but there has been little from the government on the wider threats posed by five successive heatwaves since May and expected global issues with food shortages and inflation. Continue reading...

National park officials say body of a man, 46, was recovered and about 15 others remain missing or unaccounted forThe Grand Canyon area braced for more rain and thunderstorms on Monday after a flash flood that left one person dead and about 15 others missing or unaccounted for – with scores of visitors evacuated and the only water pipeline for tourists and residents destroyed.Emergency water restrictions that began on Monday prevented tourists from staying overnight at lodges and hotels within the park. Year-round residents were asked to conserve water. Continue reading...

Guidance says states must implement ‘comprehensive measures’ to address legacy of racial discriminationA UN committee has said countries are legally obliged to consider reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and take other ⁠measures to address the enduring ⁠legacy of racial ​discrimination.Guidance published on Monday by the committee on the elimination of racial discrimination (CERD) said the obligations arose from ⁠a legally binding 1965 convention on racial discrimination, not from the legal standards that existed when the slave trade took place. Continue reading...

War on Gaza and violence in West Bank is playing out in the streets of Toledo, Ohio, where the Arab American community has flourishedFrom his office outside Toledo, Ohio, Thamin Tim Ridi opens his phone to livestream the scene outside the besieged house of his brother, Loui, thousands of miles away in the occupied West Bank.This month, with his property at risk of being destroyed by Israeli settlers, Loui traveled from Ohio to his ancestral home in Qusra, south of Nablus, where his mother and other family members have been living in constant fear of attack. Continue reading...

Death toll from unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud ​and debris now stands at more than 900. Plus, was it a mistake to take away Pluto’s planet status?Good morning. Rescue teams are working to reach hundreds of people feared trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of half a dozen hydropower projects in Nepal as more than 900 workers were reported missing after the devastating flash floods.The death toll from the ⁠unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud ​and debris that crashed through valleys of Nepal on Wednesday last week has risen to 903 people, with 16 reported dead on the Tibet side of the border. More than 4,000 are missing in Nepal, with another 500 in Tibet. Hundreds of bodies, many unidentified, have been buried in shallow graves.How large is the rescue operation? Nepal’s prime minister, Balendra Shah, said almost 21,000 security personnel were involved in the rescue operations, besides civilian workers and volunteers. China’s state-run CCTV reported that Beijing had mobilised more than 2,100 rescue workers. The Red Cross has ‌estimated that more than 90,000 people are likely to have been affected by the disaster, which China and some experts linked to the effects of the climate crisis.Why has the disaster sparked a racism row in Australia? A slew of racist social media comments have been made towards missing Australians. Most of them were on pilgrimages, including to Mount Kailash in Tibet. Mainstream media outlets including News Corp, Channel 7, Channel 10 and Nine have been hit with highly offensive and discriminatory comments on Facebook articles identifying the missing Australians.What has Donald Trump claimed US forces are doing? Hours after the attacks, US president Donald Trump claimed in a social media post that Iran’s energy hub of Kharg Island was being “blown to smithereens” but gave no further details. The White House and ⁠the US defense department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Attacking Kharg, which handled 90% of ⁠Iran’s oil exports before the war, would severely disrupt the Islamic republic’s energy trade and put huge pressure on its economy. Continue reading...

Unions say ban will take time to enact, while president also wants under-15s social media ban as key legacyFrench high schools are rushing to put in place a hurriedly signed off ban on mobile phones this week as Emmanuel Macron pushes for children to spend less time in front of screens.Education unions warned that banning mobile phone use in lycées – where children are aged 15 to 18 – would be hard to implement quickly. Continue reading...

Pedro Sánchez says two countries are cooperating after mass incursion by 70,000 people into north African enclave Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has insisted there was no evidence to suggest the Moroccan government was behind last month’s massive border crossing into Ceuta.As many as 141 people are thought to have died trying to enter the Spanish enclave at the end of July. The influx of about 70,000 men, women and children unleashed a political crisis, a humanitarian emergency and reignited tensions over immigration within the EU. Continue reading...

Tory leader expected to install Tom Tugendhat as shadow foreign secretary as Cleverly quits to run for London mayorKemi Badenoch is to reshuffle her shadow cabinet on Monday, and is expected to install Tom Tugendhat as shadow foreign secretary to replace Priti Patel.Tugendhat, a former security minister, was a leadership candidate who had previously declined to join the shadow cabinet. Badenoch is also expected to replace James Cleverly, the shadow communities secretary, who has resigned from the shadow cabinet to run for London mayor. Continue reading...

Kameron Glasgow of Florida honors wife Kenya and daughter Kennedi at local vigil after last week’s tragedyA Florida man whose wife and toddler daughter were killed by a lightning strike while he was near them recently has implored people to “hold … tight” to their loved ones.Kameron Glasgow made that arresting remark to local media at a weekend gathering honoring the memories of his wife, Kenya, and two-year-old daughter Kennedi after they died on 23 August from an exceedingly rare cause. Continue reading...

Debbie Dingell plans to introduce her ‘Hands Off Our Great Lakes Act’ today following president’s latest escalation in US-Canada trade warCanada erects giant ‘Lake Ontario’ sign as spat with Trump over name escalatesSign up for US Breaking News emailsHello and welcome to the US politics live blog.As House representatives return from the summer recess, one Democrat has already set in motion a plan to nullify Donald Trump’s latest conceited executive order.For many years, the USA has been losing more than 60 Billion Dollars a year with Canada. Why??? Our long ago stolen businesses are now coming back to America in order to avoid paying tariffs. They are lining up, just like the rest of the World!!!Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the Ontario premier erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA. Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.The White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, denied on Sunday that deporting British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos just a day after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amounted to preferential treatment. Homan said it was his understanding that Yiannopoulos, 41, had overstayed what he believed to be a visitor visa, had not appeared at an immigration hearing and was issued a final order of removal on 22 July.Trump ⁠on Sunday said NBC’s Kristen ‌Welker – host of Meet the Press – should face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Welker, during a live segment for a local Washington, DC, affiliate, described the success record of political candidates whom the president had endorsed as “mixed”. The segment aired prior to Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press.Michigan’s Democratic US senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed apologized to the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus on Saturday for comments he made after an attack on a synagogue in March, which he tied to Israel’s actions in the Middle East. “My comments may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify,” El-Sayed told reporters after he addressed the caucus at a party convention in Lansing. “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.” Continue reading...