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Chinese leader Xi Jinping calls for ‘all out’ rescue effort as death toll rises and 16 people ⁠remain buried after a ⁠landslide in the country’s westThe death toll from devastating storms in parts of China rose to 15 on Tuesday, with hundreds more injured and tens of thousands evacuated, state media reported, as the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, urged “all out” efforts to rescue people affected by the weather.Thunderstorms and gale-force winds killed at least 11 people and injured 331 in the central province of Hubei, where “severe convective weather” hit cities, while tornadoes were reported elsewhere late Monday, state news agency Xinhua said. Continue reading...

Shipment discovered at airport in Monrovia and valued at £14.2m had been falsely declared as seasoning cubesAuthorities in Liberia have charged five suspects over one of the largest drug seizures in the country’s history, after police found more than 200kg of cocaine falsely declared as Maggi seasoning cubes.The shipment, with an estimated value of $19m (£14.2m), was discovered at the international airport in Monrovia on 8 June, but the suspects were not named until a press briefing at the weekend. Continue reading...

Solomon Islands prime minister says he doesn’t want to see more countries testing ICBMs in Pacific, adding ‘be our friend but don’t threaten us’ Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has said China’s weapons test in the Pacific risks fuelling dangerous nuclear proliferation, with the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired on Monday capable of causing “considerable damage” if weaponised.International condemnation has grown overnight after China’s state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday that a “strategic missile carrying a dummy warhead” had been launched from a “strategic nuclear submarine of the navy”. Continue reading...

Thousands of women are killed in dowry disputes each year, despite the practice being banned in 1961Dowry deaths in India no longer provoke the public anger they once did, despite thousands of women’s lives still being lost every year, according to new research.The killings – women who are murdered or driven to suicide following dowry disputes between families – have also faded from political debate, despite an increase in cases. Continue reading...

Donald Trump is heading to NATO's summit in Ankara, and European leaders are holding their breath.The president will touch down in Turkey on Tuesday following a grueling week of Independence Day festivities and public relations setbacks, involving his disastrous Great American State Fair. He'll meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before joining other alliance leaders for dinner.According to a report from the Washington Post, Trump has already made his lack of enthusiasm obvious before even departing. He told NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte he wouldn't bother attending at all if Erdogan weren't hosting. When pressed on what he expects from NATO members, his answer was stripped of diplomatic niceties: "I just want loyalty."The president has spent recent days hammering the alliance on social media, asserting that America bankrolls the entire operation while gaining nothing in return. "The United States spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit from so doing," he posted.According to the Post, "One senior European diplomat fretted that Trump would arrive in Turkey exhausted and angry after a week of tiring travel, including a 3:30 a.m. Saturday return from an event at Mount Rushmore and a rally on the National Mall later that day in the sweltering Washington heat."That volatile emotional state could prove consequential. "Europeans are nervous that the way [Trump] feels about NATO is that this is not fundamentally in U.S. interests," Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Post. "Especially now as there's more domestic political pressure on European leaders to be seen as standing up to Trump."

A conservative former judge warned Americans that they're facing a stark and important choice right now.In a July 4 appearance on MS NOW, ex-judge Michael Luttig said Trump is forcing Americans to decide what kind of country they want for the next 250 years. Trump "could not have presented the choice any more starkly," Luttig added."As we celebrate our founding today once again, these are the times in America that try men's souls, and Americans must decide today, this year, what America they want," Luttig said, evoking a quote by Thomas Paine. "What America they want and what America they do not want for the next 250 years."While Luttig stressed how critical the decision is, he struck an optimistic tone about the path that Americans seem to be choosing. He noted, "Only as of late, I have seen hope in the American people that they are beginning to rise up and reject this government and this president and all that he and it represent."Luttig cautioned that Trump fits the description of the kind of monarch that the founding Americans rejected through the 27 grievances in the Declaration of Independence. According to Luttig, "The American people, I believe, have finally come to their senses in a way and understood what vision of America this president and the current government has, and Americans don't want that."He added that no matter what Americans choose, "it's the decision of the American people that will prevail," and "If we have the courage in our breasts and the hope in our hearts that our founders had 250 years ago, when they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to create this country, we will long endure."

An ex-GOP operative flagged how Trump is killing what he once touted as his "best" deal at the expense of his supporters.During an episode of The Bulwark Podcast, Tim Miller described Trump's plans concerning the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Trump negotiated and boasted about during his first term."The Trump administration decided not to renew the USMCA," Miller noted. "Which is pretty interesting because Donald Trump said that was the best agreement we've ever made, the best trade deal of all time."While "it's strange that they would not renew the best trade deal of all time," Miller explained, "They're now going to do yearly reviews where Trump shakes down the leaders of Mexico and Canada...not great."According to Miller, Trump will ditch the USMCA in favor of an arrangement where the U.S. conducts annual reviews of trade with Mexico and Canada. He predicted that the new arrangement would likely hurt American farmers, who supported Trump."The farmers, it's one hit after another for the farmers, who, it seems like, every Trump policy is like it's almost like an elaborate plot to see how much he can p— off the farmers and still run up the numbers in rural America," Miller said.Miller's guest on the show, New Yorker writer Susan Glasser, agreed."As far as the farmers go, Donald Trump loves to provide evidence that his ride or die supporters will be there no matter how much he humiliates them," Glasser said. "No matter how much he backs away from policies that would support him, no matter how much he fails to deliver the things that he said he would deliver. That to Trump, that's the ultimate sort of political own, and he loves that move."

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board is alarmed by President Donald Trump's hints he'll give F-35 fighter jets to the Turkish government — which, despite being a NATO ally on paper, has disconcerting ties to Russia.This comes after Trump recently said that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a notorious autocrat who has cracked down on freedom in his country, “is a strong member of NATO. I’m going to probably do something that’s going to make him very happy. He’s a respected man, a respected leader, and he’s been a friend of mine.”"America’s premier fighter jet should be a nonstarter for Ankara as long as it owns an S-400 missile-defense system," wrote the editorial board. Trump initially kicked Turkey out of the F-35 program in his first term, the board noted, when it bought that Russian missile system in the first place in 2019, having "offered Patriot defenses to Turkey and warned Ankara multiple times."That was the right idea in the first place, the board argued, and it makes no sense to reverse it now."Allowing the two systems to work together would amount to letting Vladimir Putin conduct target practice on the free world’s pilots," noted the board, because it would give Putin valuable intelligence about how the F-35 program works. Worse yet, "The stakes of cracking the F-35’s tech are especially acute given Russia is working with China and Iran in a larger competition with the U.S."Moreover, the board wrote, there is the soft power issue to think about: caving to Turkey and letting them have American tech at the same time they use Russian tech will "fuel European cynicism that Mr. Trump cares less about European defense spending than he does about pleasing the illiberal strongmen he views as pals" — which comes at a moment Trump has already enraged Europe with his efforts to bully Denmark into handing over Greenland.If Trump truly values "hard power and real deterrence," as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently said in a speech, a key part of that is "not handing the alliance’s prime adversary a potential cheat code on the West’s best military aircraft technology," the board concluded.