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Birthday wishes, accusations of controversial policies and a dramatic ending were the ingredients of a live debate on Tuesday between the two candidates vying to succeed Boris Johnson as British prime minister.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, the bookmakers’ favourite to win the Conservative Party leadership election, and former finance minister Rishi Sunak went head to head in their second leadership debate of the week.

The debate opened with Sunak’s birthday wishes for Liz Truss, who celebrated her 47th birthday and said she had been having “a great birthday so far,” with cake and presents given to her on her campaign trail.

Before the premature end, Truss and Sunak had again clashed over their tax and spending plans and what they would do to address a cost of living crisis, in what has become an increasingly hostile competition to become the next prime minister.

Truss says Sunak’s emphasis on balancing the government’s books and raising taxes on business would tip the economy into recession.

“I do think it is morally wrong at this moment when families are struggling to pay for their food, that we have put up taxes on ordinary people when we said we wouldn’t in our manifesto and when we didn’t need to do so,” Truss said.

Sunak, whose resignation from government earlier this month set in motion Johnson’s downfall, argued that money from tax rises he brought in was necessary to pay for extra spending on healthcare.

“I think what’s morally wrong is asking our children and grandchildren to pick up the tab for the bills that we’re not prepared to meet,” Sunak said.

Truss was vocal in her disagreement, repeatedly interrupting Sunak to say, “That’s not true” and accusing him of worsening Britain’s international competitiveness.

Other memorable moments involved the audience members, with one person asking if she should go vegetarian due to the cost of living crisis, and another countering Sunak’s comments on cancer treatment.

Truss and Sunak had sparred over their plans for about 30 minutes when there was a loud crash in the studio.

It occurred while the camera was on Truss in the debate hosted by Talk TV and the Sun newspaper. Truss held her hands to her face and said, “Oh my God,” and the broadcast was then cut.

Talk TV said the presenter, Kate McCann, had fainted.

“Although she is fine, the medical advice was that we shouldn’t continue with the debate. We apologise to our viewers and listeners,” Talk TV said on Twitter.

Both Truss and Sunak later sent messages on Twitter wishing McCann well.

A YouGov poll of Conservative Party members, who will ultimately decide on the next leader, found 50% thought Truss performed the best in the first clash on Monday, with 39% backing Sunak.

They also saw Truss as more in touch with ordinary people, more likeable and more trustworthy. Sunak narrowly edged her by 43% to 42% on who was the most prime ministerial.

The winner of the election, which will be decided by a ballot of fewer than 200,000 Conservative members, will be announced on Sept. 5.

Published : July 27, 2022

By : Reuters

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Russia’s new space chief on Tuesday signalled his country’s intent to withdraw from the International Space Station after 2024.

“As you know, we operate in international cooperation at the International Space Station. Without a doubt, we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners. But the decision to withdraw from the station after 2024 has been taken. I think that by this time we will start to form a Russian orbital station. – said Yury Borisov to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Roscosmos also posted an image of the proposed Russian space station which is planned to be called ROSS. 

General Designer of RSC Energia (the company that will make the elements of the future Russian station) said in an interview to Russian Space magazine that the first elements of the station won’t be launched earlier than 2028, though. 

Nasa and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, have been in talks to extend Russia’s participation on the space station to 2030, and the White House earlier this year approved NASA’s plans to continue running the orbital laboratory until then.

Nasa has seen Russia as crucial to keeping the space station running, and agency officials are keen on keeping the partnership in place through 2030, officials have previously said.

A football field-sized orbital science laboratory some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, the station counts Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency as other key partners, though Russia and the U.S. are regarded as the outpost’s core stakeholders — Russian thrusters control the station’s position in orbit, while an American power grid keeps the outpost running.

Earlier this month, Russia and the U.S. agreed to resume sharing astronaut flights to the space station, allowing cosmonauts to fly on American vehicles in exchange for American astronauts flying on Russia’s Soyuz.

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday said it was taken by surprise by Russia’s announcement that it plans to pull out of the International Space Station and called it an “unfortunate development.”

State Department spokesperson Ned Price told a regular news briefing the news was an unfortunate development, given the critical scientific work performed at the ISS.

Prior to Price’s remarks, Robyn Gatens, the director of the space station for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said her Russian counterparts have not communicated any such intent, as required by the intergovernmental agreement on the station.

The ISS arrangement between the United States and Russia is one of the last links of civil cooperation between the two countries as relations have sunk to their lowest point since the Cold War over Russia began its war in Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The U.S. and Russian segments of the ISS, spanning the size of a football field were deliberately built to be intertwined and technically interdependent.

For example, while U.S. gyroscopes provide day-to-day control over ISS orientation in space and U.S. solar arrays augment power supplies to the Russian module, the Russian unit provides the propulsion used to keep the station in orbit.

“You can’t have an amicable divorce,” Garrett Reisman, a retired NASA astronaut and current astronautical engineering professor at the University of Southern California, told Reuters in an interview. “We’re kind of stuck together.”

But Reisman sees Russia’s withdrawal from the ISS as an opportunity.

“I think they (NASA) were reluctant to go all out to ask for funding from Congress and to really do something publicly about trying to break this dependency on the Russians for the space station out of fear for angering the Russians for fear that they would rapidly pull out and leave us with nothing,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy or cheap to replace all the Russian capability with American capability in only two years. But I do think it’s possible. I think it’s something we should have been doing from the moment they crossed the border into Ukraine.”

“The knee-jerk reaction, even after all the stuff started happening in Ukraine, was to try to defend the ISS and keep the partnership alive, because that’s what we’ve been doing for so long and to some organizational inertia there,” Reisman continued. “I think it’s time to stop that, frankly.” 

Former Russian space chief Rogozin had previously said that Russia could not agree to extend its ISS role beyond 2024 unless the United States lifts sanctions on two Russian companies blacklisted for suspected military ties. Putin removed Rogozin as space chief on July 15, replacing him with Borisov, a former deputy prime minister and deputy defence minister.

Published : July 27, 2022

By : Reuters

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Pope Francis apologized on Monday to Canada’s native people on their land for the Church’s role in schools where indigenous children were abused, branding forced cultural assimilation ‘evil” and “disastrous error.”

Speaking near the site of two former schools in Maskwacis, in Alberta, Francis went even further, apologizing for Christian support of the overall “colonizing mentality” of the times and calling for a “serious investigation” of the schools to assist survivors and descendants in healing.

“With shame and unambiguously, I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the indigenous peoples,” Francis said in the town, whose name means “hills of the bear” in the Cree language.

The 85-year-old pope, who is still using a wheelchair and cane because of a fractured knee, is making the week-long apology tour of Canada to fulfil a promise he made to indigenous delegations that visited him earlier this year at the Vatican, where he made the initial apology.

Indigenous leaders wearing eagle-feather war headdresses greeted the pope as a fellow chief and welcomed him with chanting, drum beating, dancing and war songs.

“I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry,” he said.

He was addressing the indigenous groups in the Bear Park Pow-Wow Grounds, part of the ancestral territory of the Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Saulteaux and Nakota Sioux people.

Between 1881 and 1996 more than 150,000 indigenous children were separated from their families and brought to residential schools. Many children were starved, beaten and sexually abused in a system that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called “cultural genocide.”

“I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the Church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools,” the pope said.

The discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former residential school in British Columbia last year brought the issue to the fore again. Since then, the suspected remains of hundreds more children have been detected at other former residential schools around the country.

Before making his address, Francis, sitting in a wheelchair, prayed in a field of crosses in the cemetery of the Our Lady of Seven Sorrows indigenous Catholic parish and passed by a stone memorial to the two residential schools once in the area.

Survivors and leaders of indigenous communities say they want more than an apology. They also want financial compensation, the return of artifacts sent to the Vatican by missionaries, support in bringing an alleged abuser now living in France to justice and the release of records held by the religious orders that ran the schools.

Some also have called for the Catholic Church to renounce 15th-century papal bulls, or edicts, that justified colonial powers taking away indigenous land.

In January, the Canadian government agreed to pay C$40 billion ($31.5 billion) to compensate First Nations children who were taken from their families.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops promised to raise C$30 million for healing, culture and language revitalization and other initiatives. The fund has raised C$4.6 million so far.

Pope Francis apologized

Published : July 26, 2022

By : Reuters

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President Joe Biden said on Monday that he expects to have talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as Washington seeks to ease the US dependence on Chinese-made chips.

Biden met virtually on Monday with the chief executives of Lockheed Martin, Medtronic and Cummins along with labour leaders as part of the administration’s push for legislation to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry.

The chips bill aims to ease a shortage that has disrupted production in industries including automobiles, consumer electronics, medical equipment and high-tech weapons.

It is part of a broad effort across the government to push back against an ascendant China and ease supply-chain problems by decreasing U.S. companies’ reliance on foreign-made semiconductors.

Following the meeting, Biden said that it is still his expectation that he will speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, this week.

The bill includes about $52 billion in subsidies for U.S. semiconductor production, as well as a new, four-year 25% tax credit to encourage companies to build U.S. semiconductor plants. The tax credit is estimated to be worth about $24 billion. There are other provisions, including a $1 billion grant program for “persistently distressed communities.”

The Senate approved a bipartisan $250 billion bill boosting spending on technology research and development in June 2021, while the House passed its own version in February.

Published : July 26, 2022

By : Reuters

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The United States on Monday said there can be no “business as usual” with Myanmar’s ruling military following its execution of four democracy activists, adding that all options were on the table as it considered further measures to punish the junta.

Speaking at a regular press briefing, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price called on countries to ban sales of military equipment to Myanmar and refrain from any action that would lend the junta any international credibility.

Asked if the Biden administration was considering sanctions on Myanmar’s gas industry, a sector that was spared in previous rounds of U.S. sanctions, Price said that in their discussions of further measures, all options were on the table.

Sentenced to death in secretive trials in January and April, the four activists were accused of helping a civilian resistance movement that has fought the military since last year’s coup and bloody crackdown on nationwide protests.

The country’s first executions in decades triggered an international outcry.

No country has the potential to influence Myanmar’s trajectory more so than China, Price said, while also calling on the regional ASEAN grouping of countries to maintain precedent of barring junta representatives from regional meetings.

Published : July 26, 2022

By : Reuters

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As the Russia-Ukraine conflict enters its fifth month with no sign of resolution, well-stocked ambulances are an essential resource for delivering aid to the affected population.

“Aperson, his life and health, honour and dignity, inviolability and security are recognized as the highest value in Ukraine,” said the First Lady Ukraine Olena Zelenska in a summit.

The summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen, in its second edition, took place on July 23 was an initiative of the First Lady, aimed at drawing the attention of the world to discuss the postwar future of Ukraine and the world, as well as collecting funds for ambulance vehicles for Ukraine.

The event took place in the format of a telebridge between five countries. The main studio was located in Kyiv, on the territory of the National Reserve “Sofia Kyivska”, four others – in Warsaw, Brussels, Washington and London.

The vehicles are equipped with necessities to transport the seriously wounded to the hospital: oxygen tanks, cardiac monitors and defibrillators, electrocardiographs and ventilators. The approximate cost of one such vehicle is EUR 100,000. Such vehicles can move even off-road.

“Ambulance vehicles rescue people under shelling, take out the wounded on roads that have been destroyed by explosions. Doctors risk their lives and, together with the vehicles, actually become participants in hostilities,” she said.

According to preliminary estimates, at the time of the end of the Summit, the total amount of money raised was almost UAH 120 million. The fundraising is continued and is carried out through the United24 fundraising platform.

The summit was attended by 23 First Ladies of Austria, Belize, Belgium, Greece, the State of Israel, Ecuador, Iceland, Spain, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Poland, Serbia, the USA, Turkey, France, Germany, Montenegro, as well as Her Royal Highness the Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein and the wife of the President of the European Council.

Among the more than fifty invited speakers were President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda, President of the European Council Charles Michel, Director-General of WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Executive Director of UN Women Sima Bacchus, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides, Secretary of State of Great Britain Liz Truss, Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, football player, UNICEF goodwill ambassador David Beckham, tennis player, U24 ambassador Elina Svitolina, actors Richard Gere, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Liev Schreiber and many others.

President of Ukraine Official website

The moderators of the Summit were world-famous TV presenter and journalist Piers Morgan and Ukrainian TV presenter Hanna Homonai. At the Summit, the singer Ellie Goulding and Dmytro Shurov jointly performed the song “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna”.

The event was broadcasted in more than 20 countries of the world, including Great Britain, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, Austria, Malaysia, Belgium, Spain, Nigeria, South Africa, Poland, Turkey, Germany, USA, Hungary, Cyprus, Lebanon and North Macedonia.

President of Ukraine Official website

President of Ukraine Official website

President of Ukraine Official website

Published : July 26, 2022

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China’s national observatory on Sunday continued to issue an orange alert for high temperatures as intense heat waves linger in many regions of the country.

During daylight hours on Monday, parts of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Jiangsu, Anhui, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang are expected to experience temperatures of over 35 degrees Celsius, the National Meteorological Center said.

Temperatures in parts of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi and Xinjiang may surpass 40 degrees Celsius, the centre said.

The centre advised the public to avoid outdoor activities during high-temperature periods and suggested that workers exposed to high temperatures shorten continuous working hours.

China has a four-tier colour-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue. 

Published : July 25, 2022

By : Xinhua

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A volcano on Japan’s major western island of Kyushu erupted on Sunday evening, sending black smoke billowing high into the air, but there were no immediate reports of any damage or injuries, and authorities said they did not expect a major eruption.

The volcano, which is called Sakurajima and is located on the southern tip of Kyushu near the city of Kagoshima, erupted at about 8:05 p.m. (1105 GMT), according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA).

Video footage from JMA’s surveillance camera showed what appeared to be a red mass flowing down one side of the volcano, after red projectiles shooting upwards.

Volcanic stones rained down at a distance of 2.5 km (1.5 miles) from the volcano, said JMA. The eruption alert level has been raised to 5, the highest, with some areas advised to evacuate, but no large eruption was expected.

Sakurajima is one of Japan’s most active volcanoes and eruptions of varying levels take place on a regular basis. In 2019 it spewed ash 5.5 km (3.4 miles) high.

Published : July 25, 2022

By : Reuters

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Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday that any ships coming to Ukrainian ports to pick up additional grain would be “inspected to make sure they don’t bring any weapons.”

In an address to the Arab League in Cairo, Lavrov said that any ships carrying weapons would be “detrimental to the continued conflict.”

Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine disrupted shipments and sped up a rise in global commodity prices.

Since the start of the war, a blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia’s Black Sea fleet has trapped tens of millions of tonnes of grain, worsening global supply chain bottlenecks.

Egypt is one of the world’s top wheat importers and last year bought about 80% of those imports from Russia and Ukraine.

In its response to the war, Egypt has been torn between long-standing ties with Russia and its close relationship to Western powers that have sanctioned and sought to isolate Moscow.

Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations signed a deal on Friday (July 22) to restart Ukrainian wheat exports by sea, but a Russian strike on Odesa on Saturday (July 23) put implementation of the agreement in doubt.

Lavrov earlier met with Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry and offered reassurances over Russian grain supplies to Egypt.

Western embassies had lobbied Egypt and the Arab League ahead of Lavrov’s visit, which included talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and representatives of the Arab League.

Published : July 25, 2022

By : Reuters

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Wentian, the first lab module of China’s space station, has successfully docked with the combination of the Tianhe core module, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

The Wentian module, launched on Sunday afternoon, docked with the front port of Tianhe at 3:13 a.m. Monday (Beijing Time), after it entered the planned orbit and completed state setting.

The whole process took approximately 13 hours, the CMSA said.

“This is the first time we practised the in-orbit docking between large modules, and also the first semi-autonomous fast-docking. In general, the whole process was under very accurate control and accomplished successfully,” said Zou Xuemei, chief engineer of Wentian lab module mission at Beijing Aerospace Control Center.

It is the first time that China’s two 20-tonne-level spacecrafts conducted rendezvous and docking in orbit, and also the first time that space rendezvous and docking were carried out during the astronauts’ in-orbit stay in the space station, the CMSA said.

Later, the Shenzhou-14 astronauts will enter Wentian as scheduled, the CMSA said.

Like the Tianhe, the Wentian lab module with a length of 17.9 meters is also equipped with living facilities for the astronauts, including three sleeping areas, a toilet and a kitchen. It has an airlock cabin which will become the main exit-entry point for extravehicular activities (EVAs) once active, replacing the role now played by the Tianhe docking hub.

Its main role is hosting experiment racks for science experiments, while also providing backups to the life support and control functions of Tianhe.

The new crew facilities will allow China to perform a first crew handover. This will take place when the current Shenzhou-14 crew greet three new astronauts aboard Shenzhou-15 in December. Tiangong will then host six astronauts for a period of days.

It is the first laboratory module added to the under-construction space station, after the 16.6-meter-long core module Tianhe was launched in April 2021.

At present, China’s space station complex is composed of the core module Tianhe, Tianzhou-4 cargo craft and Shenzhou-14 crewed spaceship.

China’s space station will be expanded from the foundational core module Tianhe into a basic T-shaped three-module structure by the end of this year, with Tianhe in the centre and the two lab modules Wentian and Mengtian on each side of it. Mengtian, the final component of the space station, is scheduled to arrive in October.

Published : July 25, 2022

By : Reuters