World News

A man has been arrested after an 11-year-old girl and a 34-year-old woman were stabbed in central London, London’s Metropolitan Police said Monday.

The attack occurred in Leicester Square, a magnet for tourists with its shops, theaters and cinemas. The square and surrounding area have an estimated 2.5 million visitors every week.

Police said the two victims were taken to a major trauma center. The extent of their injuries was not immediately clear.

The stabbing occurred as Britain is on edge after violence for the past week as crowds spouting anti-immigrant and Islamophobic slogans clashed with police. The disturbances have been fueled by right-wing activists who used social media to spread misinformation about a knife attack that killed three girls during a Taylor Swift-themed dance event.

Call for better safety measures as ‘civic volunteer’ arrested after attack on female trainee doctor in Kolkata

Doctors at government hospitals in several Indian states have gone on strike in a protest after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata on Friday.

The 31-year-old woman was attacked at the state-run RG Kar medical college, where she was a resident doctor, after she went to rest in a seminar room following dinner with colleagues. Her brutalised body was found with multiple injuries and an autopsy confirmed sexual assault and homicide.

On Saturday police arrested Sanjay Roy, a “civic volunteer” at the hospital, in connection with the attack. Roy’s duties were unclear but local media reports said he operated in part as a tout, helping to speed up admissions for patients in return for money.

Protests by doctors demanding justice and better workplace security that initially began in Kolkata, in West Bengal, have now spread to other parts of the country.

Russia is evacuating residents from a second border region, as Ukraine continues its surprise week-long offensive inside the country.

Some 11,000 people in the Belgorod region have been moved, Russian state media reported, because of "enemy action" near the border.

Belgorod lies next to Kursk - where Ukrainian troops launched their surprise attack into Russian territory last Tuesday.

Ukrainian forces have since advanced up to 18 miles (30km) inside Russia - the deepest incursion into the country since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv claims thousands of troops are involved.

A helicopter pilot has died after crashing into the roof of a Hilton hotel in Cairns, Australia, igniting a blaze on top of the building. Australian media reported the helicopter was stolen.

Hundreds of firefighters were dispatched north of the capital as black smoke could be seen rising over Athens. A children's hospital and military clinic were also evacuated.

Some 670 firefighters and more then 30 water-dropping aircraft were out at first light in Greece on Monday as a dozen suburbs of Athens were evacuated due to ongoing wildfires.

"Civil protection forces battled hard throughout the night, but despite superhuman efforts, the fire evolved rapidly," fire department spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said.

Residents of Marathon and several other towns directly north of Athens were ordered to flee to safety, while a children's hospital and a military clinic were also evacuated.

Marathon's Mayor Stergios Tsirkas called disaster a "biblical catastrophe."

There is “clear” Russian involvement in the far-right riots and security services will be looking closely at the instigators, a former head of the MI6 Russia desk has said.

Christopher Steele, the ex-spy who compiled a notorious dossier on Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia, said that security officials would be “looking very carefully” at the people encouraging anti-immigration riots in the past fortnight.

After a violent assault on a children’s dance class in Southport last month, rioters attacked mosques, police officers and a hotel in Rotherham housing asylum seekers. The unrest was whipped up by far-right activists online who falsely claimed that a Muslim immigrant was behind the attack.

Brazilian authorities are working to piece together what exactly caused a plane with 62 people aboard to crash in a fiery wreck in Sao Paulo state on Friday.

Local airline Voepass' plane, an ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop, was headed for Sao Paulo's international airport in Guarulhos with 58 passengers and 4 crew members when it went down inside a gated community in the city of Vinhedo. The plane took off from Cascavel Airport at 11:46 a.m. local time, the airline said.

On the sixth day of Ukraine’s advance into Kursk Oblast in southern Russia, there’s growing evidence the Ukrainian invasion corps—some or all of up to five 2,000-person brigades plus at least one 400-person independent battalion—plans to stay.

The Ukrainians are digging trenches. Anticipating static warfare along or near the existing front line, the Russians are digging in, too.

That both sides are fortifying their positions doesn’t mean the Ukrainians are done advancing. Nor does it mean the Russians can’t counterattack—and push the Ukrainians back to the border, 10 miles away.

But it does mean that stabilization of the front line—and a long-term Ukrainian occupation of part of Kursk—is on the table.

Javad Zarif has stepped down from the post of vice president, citing his disappointment with the new Cabinet. It's the second crisis for newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian.

When a white van drew up next to the office of the Palestine Customs Police in Tubas, a town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Abdel Nasser Sarhan had no reason to be suspicious.

According to Abdel Nasser's colleagues, the van’s driver got out and greeted him in Arabic.

Seconds later, a man in jeans and a dark T-shirt emerges from the direction of the white van, uniformed Israeli soldiers behind him.

He raises a handgun and shoots Abdel Nasser dead.

In a statement released on the day of the incident, the Israeli army said the shooting occurred in the course of an operation to detain two wanted men.

A central London glass police box has been made to look like a tank of piranhas, in the seventh in series of works by the graffiti artist Banksy.

The elusive artist claimed the work as his own by featuring it on his Instagram account in a post at 1pm on Sunday.

The fish depicted on the police box are different in style from the previous six silhouetted designs that Banksy has claimed as his work on successive days over the past week.

Golan, who entered politics five years ago after a career in the army, is one of the most prominent of the many brave Israelis who took matters into their own hands that day to save others. His new image as a hero has given his political career a shot in the arm – and he has decided his new mission is to revive his country’s moribund left.

“The right today in Israel is people who think we can annex millions of Palestinians, and Israel should adopt some sort of policy of revenge, that we can live by our swords and not attempt to reconcile with the Palestinians or any other hostile entity in the region. I think 180 degrees the opposite.”

Israeli politics has changed, Golan said. “I’m not sure whether Israel right now is truly a democratic state any more … It is not a question of left or right any more: these titles are meaningless,” he said.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/39421700

https://archive.is/D7tlK

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19046336

CNN — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed Kyiv’s troops are fighting inside Russia, days into the surprise Ukrainian cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region that has become a major embarrassment for the Kremlin.

“Ukraine is proving that it really knows how to restore justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed – pressure on the aggressor,” Zelensky said in his nightly address to the nation on Saturday, thanking “every unit” of Ukraine’s armed forces for making it possible “to push the war out into the aggressor’s territory.”

The statement marked the first time Zelensky officially acknowledged the incursion, which took by surprise both Russia and Ukraine’s allies. Ukrainian officials have for days remained tight-lipped about the operation, even as photographs, videos and firsthand reports of Ukrainian soldiers inside Russia started to emerge.

Moscow has been scrambling to contain the attack. Russian authorities imposed a sweeping counter-terror operation in Kursk and two other border regions and tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from Kursk.

Now into its sixth day, the attack on Kursk is a significant development in the more than two-year old conflict.

Jubilant FoodWorks (JUBI.NS), opens new tab, Domino's Pizza's (DPZ.N), opens new tab Indian franchisee, reported a near two-fold increase in first-quarter profit on Friday, as value meals attracted budget-conscious customers.

Consolidated net profit rose to 558 million rupees ($6.65 million) for the quarter ended June 30, from 289.2 million rupees a year earlier, it said in an exchange filing.

Persistently high inflation has been prompting consumers to pare back spending on dining out or ordering in. India's retail inflation hovered around 5% throughout the quarter amid high food prices, increasing cost pressure on the quick-service restaurant sector.

To spur demand Jubilant offered free home delivery and value deals such as meals for 99 rupees ($1.18), in a quarter that coincided with the T20 Cricket World Cup and school summer vacations.

U.S. based short-seller Hindenburg Research alleged on Saturday that the head of India's market regulator, Madhabi Puri Buch, previously held investments in offshore funds also used by the Adani Group.

In a late night press statement, Buch said the report's allegations were baseless.

A personal statement from Buch on Sunday said that all disclosure requirements had been followed diligently and that investments in the fund referred to in the Hindenburg report were made in 2015 in a private capacity, two years before she joined the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

India's markets regulator also asked investors to remain calm and exercise due diligence before reacting to such reports.

The pace of Russia's economic growth slowed in the second quarter of 2024, official data showed Friday, amid concerns over stubborn inflation and warnings of "overheating."

Gross domestic product (GDP) dipped from 5.4% in the first quarter to 4% from April to June, the lowest quarterly result since the start of 2023 but still a sign the economy is expanding.

Inflation meanwhile showed no signs of easing, with consumer prices rising 9.13% year-on-year in July — up from 8.59% in June and the highest figure since February 2023, according to data from the Rosstat statistics agency.