The accusation comes hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to oversee Navy Day celebrations in his hometown of St Petersburg and approve Russia’s naval doctrine as Moscow presses on with its military intervention in Ukraine.
“An unidentified object flew into the courtyard of the fleet’s headquarters,” Mikhail Razvozhayev, governor of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“According to preliminary information, it is a drone.”
He said Ukraine had decided to “spoil Navy Day for us”.
The Ukrainian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Razvozhayev said that five employees of the fleet headquarters had been injured in the incident and that the Federal Security Service (FSB) was investigating its circumstances.
“All celebrations have been cancelled for security reasons,” Razvozhayev said. “Please remain calm and stay home if possible.”
Navy Day is an annual Russian holiday during which its fleets stage naval parades and honour its sailors.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, prompting a major row with the West which deepened over Moscow’s role in an insurgency of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Wickremesinghe took office earlier this month after public anger over the island nation’s worst economic crisis forced his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and quit.
In a meeting on Saturday with the influential monks of the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, one of Buddhism’s most sacred shrines, Wickremesinghe outlined his plans.
“As the president, I wish to start a new journey,” Wickremesinghe was quoted as telling the monks in his first meeting with the powerful Buddhist clergy since taking office.
“I would like to get all the parties together and go on that journey as well as to form an all-party government.”
He has written to all lawmakers asking them to join a unity government.
A former opposition MP, Wickremesinghe, 73, took up the premiership for the sixth time in May after Rajapaksa’s elder brother Mahinda resigned and there were no other takers for the job.
Wickremesinghe went onto become the president after Gotabaya escaped on July 9 when tens of thousands of protesters angry at the economic crisis stormed the presidential palace.
He fled to Singapore from where he resigned five days later and Wickremesinghe became interim president and later won a vote in parliament confirming his ascension.
Sri Lanka’s 22 million people have endured months of lengthy blackouts, record inflation and shortages of food, fuel and medicines. Since late last year, the country has run out of foreign exchange to finance even the most essential imports.
In April, Sri Lanka defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt and opened bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund.
Wickremesinghe told monks that the economy would decline further this year with a contraction of 7.0 per cent, but expected a recovery next year.
“I am working to re-stabilise this economy and build the economy in such a way that the country can be developed by 2023, 2024.
“It is a difficult task. But if you don’t do it now, it will be more difficult. We should think about whether we should try to cure the patient by giving medicine or let the patient die without giving medicine,” he added.
He said inflation currently running at 60.8pc could go up further.
After his election as president, Wickremesinghe, while ordering security forces to clear protest sites, has appointed an interim cabinet leaving the door open for others to join.
He has called a new session of parliament from Wednesday and is expected to expand the 18-member cabinet to accommodate members from opposition parties.
Biden, who tested positive for the disease nine days ago but then tested negative twice earlier this week, will resume isolation procedures, and his positive test is believed to be “rebound” positivity experienced by some Covid patients, according to White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor.
Biden tweeted about his positive case, saying it can happen to a “small minority of folks.”
“I've got no symptoms but I am going to isolate for the safety of everyone around me. I’m still at work, and will be back on the road soon,” he tweeted.
Folks, today I tested positive for COVID again.
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 30, 2022
This happens with a small minority of folks.
I’ve got no symptoms but I am going to isolate for the safety of everyone around me.
I’m still at work, and will be back on the road soon.
The positive test jeopardizes a Tuesday trip to Michigan Biden had planned to tout the recent passage of legislation to boost the semiconductor industry, which the White House announced earlier on Saturday.
O’Connor said Biden, who is 79, tested negative for the last four days, and there is no plan to reinitiate treatment given his lack of symptoms.
Biden previously described his experience with Covid as mild, saying he was able to continue working while in isolation and attributed his relative ease with the disease to vaccines and other treatments.
O’Connor had previously said Biden would be tested regularly to watch for a potential “rebound” Covid-19 case, which can be experienced by some patients who have been treated with Paxlovid, the drug the president received.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a press release that the butterfly is about to collapse due to rising temperatures and the destruction of the insect's natural environment.
A report shows that the Monarch butterfly's population has dropped down about 70% in the past 10 years. "A particular set of the population in the Western United States has declined by nearly 99.9%," said IUCN.
Dr Sean T O’Brien, President and CEO of Nature Serve, explained that a lot was needed to be done to protect the species.
With the discovery of more holes in the Ozone layer, other butterflies and animals have also become victims of climate change.
Payman broke down a few minutes into her first speech in Parliament when thanking her father for his sacrifices who arrived in Australia as an Afghan refugee and died in 2018.
“Who would have thought that a young woman born in Afghanistan and the daughter of a refugee would be standing in this chamber today?” said Payman.
“Knowing the sacrifices that my dad went through as a taxi driver and security guard to ensure he saved up enough money to make ends meet, to support his family, and to ensure my siblings and I had the future he wasn't able to secure for himself.”
Payman was eight years old when she arrived in Australia in 2003 with her mother and three younger siblings.
She attended Australian Islamic College in Perth and went to university to become a doctor, but got involved in politics instead.
Payman's father died of leukaemia in 2018 at the age of 47 and unfortunately never lived to see her become a senator.
She also addressed concerns about her hijab, emphasising that wearing it was her choice.
“For those who choose to advise me on what I should wear, or judge my competency based on my external experience, know that the hijab is my choice,” Payman said. “I am young, I am progressive, and my family were born overseas - I am a representative of modern Australia.”
International media reported that Xi told Biden that the United States should abide by the “one-China principle” and stressed that China firmly opposed Taiwanese independence and “interference” by external forces.
According to international media The White House said in a statement that Biden told Xi that US policy had not changed and Washington “strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”.
Most recently, Beijing has issued escalating warnings over a potential visit to Taiwan by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying it would view such a trip as a provocation.
The self-governing island receives informal defensive support from the US, but Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve its goals.
The country’s $416 billion economy has been one of the fastest-growing in the world for years, but rising energy and food prices because of the Russia-Ukraine war have inflated its import bill and the current account deficit.
“A letter was sent to the IMF seeking assistance, but we have not mentioned how much we want,” Minister A.H.M. Mustafa Kamal told reporters.
“We are waiting to see their conditions. If the IMF conditions are in favour of the country and compatible with our development policy, we’ll go for it, otherwise not. Seeking a loan from the IMF does not mean Bangladesh’s economy is in bad shape.”
A senior IMF official had told Reuters on Tuesday that Bangladesh had asked it to start talks on a new loan under the global creditor’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust. Such funds are capped at 150 per cent of a country’s quota or, in Bangladesh’s case, a maximum of $1 billion.
Bangladesh’s Daily Star newspaper reported on Tuesday that the country wanted $4.5bn from the IMF.
Bangladesh’s economic mainstay is its export-oriented garments industry, which could suffer if sales fall in its main markets in Europe and the United States because of a slowdown in the global economy.
After garments, remittances are the second highest source of foreign currency for Bangladesh.
The South Asian country’s foreign exchange reserves fell to $39.67bn as of July 20 — sufficient for just over five months worth of imports — from $45.5bn a year earlier.
Its July to May current account deficit was $17.2bn, compared with a deficit of $2.78bn in the year-earlier period, as its trade deficit widened and remittances fell.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan are the other two South Asian countries to have sought IMF support this year.
Meta Platforms Inc, Alphabet-owned Google, TikTok, Amazon.com Inc and Twitter had signed a code of practice, said Netsafe, a government-funded internet-safety group.
The companies would follow the code as self-regulation, Netsafe chief Brent Carey said in a statement.
"There are too many Kiwis being bullied, harassed, and abused online, which is why the industry has rallied together to protect users," Carey said in a statement.
Industry lobby group NZTech will be responsible for the companies meeting obligations, which include reducing harmful content online, reporting how they do that and supporting independent evaluation of results.
"We hope the governance framework will enable it to evolve alongside local conditions, while at the same time respecting the fundamental rights of freedom of expression," said NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller.
Meta and TikTok said in statements they were enthusiastic about the code making online platforms safer and more transparent.
Interest groups want more detail, however - for example, about sanctions for any failure by the companies to comply and about a mechanism for public complaints.
They also point to the pact being administered by an industry body, not the government.
"This is a weak attempt to preempt regulation – in New Zealand and overseas – by promoting an industry-led model," Mandy Henk, chief executive of Tohatoha NZ, a non-profit organisation that lobbies on the social impact of technology, said in a statement.
The framework that the companies agreed to is called the Aotearoa New Zealand Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms.
New Zealand has been a leader in trying to stamp out violent extremism online. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 launched a global initiative to end online hate.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian, during his regular briefing in Beijing said China is ready to follow through on the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries in this regard.
He said China and Pakistan have agreed on participation of third parties in CPEC and exchanges among media and think tanks, including promoting cooperation schemes involving third parties in line with the existing consensus and extending CPEC projects to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, in a tweet, Pakistan's Ambassador to China Moin-ul-Haque said the third meeting of CPEC Joint Working Group on International Cooperation placed emphasis on high-quality development of CPEC.
He said as an open and inclusive platform, both sides welcomed interested third parties to benefit from avenues for mutually beneficial cooperation opened by CPEC.
Widespread public anger over the island’s unprecedented economic crisis saw protesters storm and occupy the colonial-era building earlier this month.
Soldiers were forced to rescue then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa from his nearby residence on the same day, with the leader fleeing to Singapore and resigning days later.
Troops armed with batons and automatic weapons cleared the 92-year-old presidential secretariat in a pre-dawn raid on Friday on the orders of Rajapaksa’s successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe.
At least 48 people were wounded and nine arrested in the operation, during which security forces tore down tents set up by protesters outside the complex since April.
“The office is ready for reopening from Monday,” said a police official on Sunday, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
“The siege of the secretariat, which lasted since May 9, has now been lifted.”
Police said forensic experts had been called in to check damage to the presidential secretariat and gather evidence.
Western governments, the United Nations and human rights groups have condemned Wickremesinghe for using violence against unarmed protesters who had announced their intention to vacate the site later on Friday.
Wickremesinghe defended the crackdown and said he had told Colombo-based diplomats on Friday that blocking government buildings was unacceptable.
Police spokesman Nihal Talduwa said protesters were free to continue their demonstrations at a designated site near the presidential office.
“They can remain at the official protest site. The government may even open a few more places for demonstrators in the city,” Talduwa said on Sunday.
The military operation to clear the secretariat building and its immediate surroundings came less than 24 hours after Wickremesinghe was sworn in and just before a new Cabinet was appointed.
Sri Lanka’s 22 million people have also endured months of lengthy blackouts, record inflation and shortages of food, fuel and petrol.
Its government is officially bankrupt, having defaulted on its US$51 billion foreign debt, and is currently in bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund.
The economic crisis which fuelled the protest campaign shows no sign of easing, but the government announced on Sunday it would reopen schools which had remained shut for the better part of a month.
The education ministry said students and teachers will be asked to return to school only for three days each week as transport is still hampered by a national fuel shortage.
Miles-long queues of motorists waiting to fill up were seen across the country Sunday despite the government introducing a rationing system.
New president Wickremesinghe has said he will unveil a fresh budget for the rest of the year in August as previous revenue and expenditure estimates were unrealistic.
The referendum will take place a year to the day after Saied sacked the government and suspended parliament in a decisive blow against the country’s often chaotic young democracy.
“Get out”, the demonstrators yelled as they waved Tunisia’s red-and-white flag at a gathering on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in the capital.
“The people want the fall of Kais Saied; the people want the fall of the constitution,” chanted those who rallied in response to a call by the National Salvation Front (FSN) opposition alliance.
Tunisia is preparing to vote tomorrow on a draft constitution that would enshrine the vast powers that Saied has exercised since he sacked the government and suspended parliament on July 25 last year.
Media footage showed soldiers in riot gear and armed with assault rifles tearing down the camp, set up in April by protesters enraged by the country's economic collapse and acute shortages of fuel, food and medicine.
Wickremesinghe, a six-time prime minister, was sworn in as president on Thursday after winning a parliamentary vote to succeed Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled to Singapore last week in the wake of massive public protests triggered by Sri Lanka's worst economic crisis in seven decades.
"A joint operation involving the military, police and police special forces was launched in the early hours to recover the presidential secretariat from the protesters as they have no legal right to hold it," police spokesperson Nalin Thalduwa told Reuters.
Nine people arrested in the pre-dawn raid were later granted bail by a Colombo court, police said.
Protesters had feared a crackdown after Wickremesinghe as acting head of state on Monday imposed a national state of emergency. Many regard him as an ally of Rajapaksa.
Previous emergency regulations have been used to give powers to the military to arrest protesters and curtail the right to demonstrate.
A representative of the United Nations and Western envoys urged the government to exercise restraint, saying the use of force could further destabilise the island nation, whose economy desperately needs an International Monetary Fund bailout, having virtually run out of dollars to pay for vital imports.
The United States' ambassador to Sri Lanka, Julie Chung, said she had met the new president to express "grave concern" over the violence against protesters in Colombo on Friday.
"This is not the time to crack down on citizens, but instead to look ahead at the immediate and tangible steps the Government can take to regain the trust of the people, restore stability, and rebuild the economy," Chung said in a tweet.
Just hours after security forces moved against the protest camp, another Rajapaksa ally, senior lawmaker Dinesh Gunawardena, was sworn in as Sri Lanka's new prime minister.
Seventeen other ministers completed the cabinet, with former finance minister Ali Sabry becoming foreign minister, while sources said Wickremesinghe would keep the finance portfolio.
As Wickremesinghe, lawmakers and officials listened to Gunawardena being sworn in at the prime minister's office, uniformed military officers sat on one side of the room.
Angered by the pre-dawn raids, hundreds of protesters marched from the city's main railway station towards the Galle Face protest site, where military and riot police manning barricades held them back.
"The very first day he used the armed forces - this is the face of Ranil Wickremesinghe," said Rajeevkanth Rajkumar, a construction company executive who was among the protesters. "We don't want any more innocent people to be injured. But we will go to that place (the protest site) at any cost."
Opposition politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who lost the vote for the presidency, said on Twitter: "Let's bring down the brutal ... regime that viciously attacked the protesters at Galle Face".
Soon after midnight on Friday hundreds of security personnel had surrounded the "Gota Go Gama" protest camp, mockingly named after Rajapaksa, and then had begun to tear down tents in front of the secretariat, according to protest organisers.
Security forces appeared to have taken control of the entire secretariat, which was earlier this month seized by protesters along with the president and prime minister's official residences. The residences were later handed back to government authorities.
At least 50 protesters were injured in Friday's clashes, the organisers said, including some journalists who were beaten by security forces. Hospital sources said two were hospitalised.
"They beat us really cruelly," said Buddhika Abeyrathne, 34, a protester who witnessed the raid but did not appear injured himself. "Mr Wickremesinghe doesn’t know what democracy is."
Hundreds of protesters gathered at the GotaGoGama site in Colombo, where only last week they had celebrated Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation as president.
Addressing the crowds, protest leaders refused to accept six-time Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, 73, as the new head of state, holding him partly responsible for the country’s unprecedented economic and political crisis.
The Met Office said the provisional record, which still needs to be confirmed, was recorded at 12.50 pm (1150 GMT) at London’s Heathrow Airport, surpassing the previous high of 38.7C recorded in 2019.
Stephen Belcher at the Met Office said he had not expected to see such temperatures in Britain in his career.
“Research conducted here at the Met Office has demonstrated that it’s virtually impossible for the UK to experience 40C in an undisrupted climate but climate change driven by greenhouse gases has made these extreme temperatures possible,” he said.
With the mercury still rising, train routes from London up the east and west coast of the country were cancelled, electricity companies reported mass outages and normally busy city centres appeared quiet. Network Rail tweeted a number of pictures showing large bends and kinks in rail tracks.
To the east of the capital a large fire engulfed homes in the village of Wennington, with flames tearing across neighbouring tinder-dry fields and approaching a historic church. Elsewhere large grass areas around the capital were on fire, blowing smoke over major roads and nearby areas.
London Fire Brigade declared a major incident and urged people to stop having barbecues.
Britain, which can struggle to maintain key transport services in extreme heat or snow, had been put on a state of national emergency over the unprecedented temperatures.
‘Do not travel’
Transport minister Grant Shapps said there had been a considerable amount of travel disruption.
“Infrastructure, much of which was built from the Victorian times, just wasn’t built to withstand this type of temperature,” he said.
Climate scientists said the once-unthinkable temperature in London was likely to become more common in coming years.
Sony Kapoor, a climate and macro-economic professor at European University Institute, said he had long thought that people underestimated the physical impacts of climate change in contemporary times. “But even I never thought we would see 40 degree Celsius in London in 2022,” he said.
The arrival of a searing heatwave that first sparked wildfires across Europe before arriving in Britain has turned the spotlight on to “net zero” pledges made by the candidates running to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister.
After Johnson championed the move to net zero status when Britain held the United Nations COP26 summit in 2021, some of the candidates to replace him have appeared more lukewarm and rated other challenges facing the country as their priority.
One candidate, Kemi Badenoch, said she believed in cutting carbon emissions but not in bankrupting the economy to do so.
Lawmakers who later gathered in a hot building in the House of Commons to announce the elimination of Badenoch from the competition were kept cool by multiple large fans.
Russia has been hit by a slew of sanctions from the United States and its allies over its invasion of Ukraine in late February, which it terms a "special military operation".
An invoice seen by Reuters shows the bill for supplying oil to one refiner is calculated in dollars while payment is requested in dirhams.
Russian oil major Rosneft is pushing crude through trading firms including Everest Energy and Coral Energy into India, now its second biggest oil buyer after China.
Western sanctions have prompted many oil importers to shun Moscow, pushing spot prices for Russian crude to record discounts against other grades.
That provided Indian refiners, which rarely bought Russian oil due to high freight costs, an opportunity to snap up exports at hefty discounts to Brent and Middle East staples.
Moscow replaced Saudi Arabia as the second biggest oil supplier to India after Iraq for the second month in a row in June.
At least two Indian refiners have already settled some payments in dirhams, the sources said, adding more would make such payments in coming days.
The invoice showed payments to be made to Gazprombank via Mashreq Bank, its correspondent bank in Dubai.
The United Arab Emirates, seeking to maintain what it says is a neutral position, has not imposed sanctions on Moscow, and the payments could add to the frustration of some in the West, who privately say the UAE's position is untenable and siding with Russia.
The trading firms used by Rosneft have started asking for the dollar equivalent payment in dirhams from this month, the sources said.
Rosneft, Coral Energy and Everest Energy did not respond to Reuters emails seeking comment.
Russia wants to increase its use of non-Western currencies for trade with countries such as India, its foreign minister Sergi Lavrov said in April.
The country's finance minister last month also said Moscow may start buying currencies of "friendly" countries, using such holdings to influence the exchange rate of the dollar and euro as a means of countering sharp gains in the rouble.
The Moscow currency exchange is preparing to launch trading in the Uzbek sum and the dirham.
Dubai, the Gulf's financial and business centre, has emerged as a refuge for Russian wealth.
India, also maintaining a neutral position, recognizes insurance cover by Russian companies and has offered classification to ships managed by a Dubai-based subsidiary of Moscow's top shipping group to enable trade.
India's central bank last week introduced a new mechanism for international trade settlements in rupees, which many experts see as a way to promote trade with countries that are under Western sanctions, such as Russia and Iran.
The North says 99.98 percent of its 4.77 million fever patients since late April have fully recovered, but due to an apparent lack of testing, it has not released any figures for those who tested positive.
“The anti-epidemic campaign is improved to finally defuse the crisis completely,” the Korean Central News Agency said. It added that the North had reported 310 more people with fever symptoms.
The World Health Organization has cast doubts on North Korea’s claims, saying last month it believed the situation was getting worse, not better, amid an absence of independent data.
The North’s declaration could be a prelude to restoring trade long hampered by the pandemic, one analyst said.
“Under the current trend, North Korea could announce in less than a month that its COVID crisis is over and that could be a prelude to resuming cross-border trade,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Sejong Institute’s North Korea studies centre in South Korea.
Sri Lanka’s acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe has declared a state of emergency in the crisis-ridden island nation in an effort to head off unrest ahead of a vote in parliament later this week to elect a new president.
Wickremesinghe announced the measure “in the interests of public security, the protection of public order and the maintenance of supplies and services essential to the life of the community,” according to a government notice released late on Sunday.
The specific legal provisions of the latest emergency are yet to be announced by the government but previous emergency regulations have been used to deploy the military to arrest and detain people, search private property and dampen public protests.
Sri Lanka’s beleaguered leaders have imposed a state of emergency several times since April, when mass protests started against the government’s handling of the economic crisis and a persistent shortage of essentials.
Capital Colombo remained calm on Monday morning, with traffic and pedestrians out on the streets.
“Why is he declaring a state of emergency? In fear of people? Is there an emergency situation in the country? There is no emergency situation at all,” Jayamapthy Wickremeratne, an expert on constitutional affairs, told media on Monday.
“This is arbitrary action by the acting president. People in this country have a democratic right to convey their demands, peacefully, to their representatives. Therefore, this is an attempt by Mr Wickremesinghe to stop people from coming to the streets.”
Bhavani Fonseka, senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, said declaring a state of emergency was becoming the government’s default response. “This has proven ineffective in the past,” she said.
Rev. Father Jeewantha Peiris, one of the leaders of the protest movement, said the sudden declaration of the state of emergency is meant to intimidate the protesters.
“We have been protesting peacefully for 100 days but there was no state of emergency. Then why now?” he told media.
“We see that Ranil Wickremesinghe is getting ready for oppression but our struggle would not be oppressed by these actions. We have a democratic right to protest and we will continue our struggle till we achieve our last demand.”
Posts
All Comments
