World Briefing: August 25, 2024
Israel launches a wave of air strikes across southern Lebanon as Hezbollah says it carries out large-scale attack with rockets and drones on Israeli positions in "initial response" to killing of Fouad Shukur, one of its top commanders, last month. Israeli Defence Minister Gallant announced a 48-hour nationwide state of emergency.
A nighttime Russian strike on a hotel in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk wounded two journalists, while a third was missing in the rubble, authorities said Sunday. Vadym Filashkin, head of the Donetsk regional government, said in a Telegram post that the journalists were British, US and Ukrainian nationals and that a rescue operation was under way.
Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov has been arrested by French police at an airport north of Paris. Mr Durov was detained after his private jet had landed at Le Bourget Airport, French media reported. According to officials the 39-year-old had been arrested under a warrant for offences related to the popular messaging app. Russia's embassy in France is taking "immediate steps" to clarify the situation, according to Russia's TASS state news agency. - BBC
The Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong has called on the government to improve transparency over media worker visa denials, after Bloomberg said Chinese journalist Haze Fan’s application was rejected without explanation. The Immigration Department should conduct an “urgent review” of its decision to deny Fan a work visa, the FCC said. The FCC said it had reached out to the department to ask it to “improve transparency in respect of any denial of work visas in this and in other similar cases. Whilst we request an urgent review of this decision, a proper explanation for any future denial of work visas or entry into Hong Kong by journalists is a necessary improvement to the system, and would positively impact the public and international perception of Hong Kong as a business centre,” the FCC’s statement read. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said: “Journalists and media workers face enormous challenges in Hong Kong, with the denial of Haze Fan’s visa the latest in a series of decisions limiting press freedom in the city - HKFP
China plans to voice “serious concerns” on Taiwan and other security issues in upcoming talks with the United States, state media said Sunday. “China will focus on expressing serious concerns, clarifying its firm stance, and making stern demands regarding the Taiwan issue, development rights, and China’s strategic security,” state broadcaster CCTV reported, citing a senior foreign ministry official. US national security advisor Jake Sullivan is due to visit Beijing from August 27 to 29, where he will meet with China’s foreign minister Wang Yi in a bid to manage tensions ahead of US elections in November. This will be the first visit by a US national security advisor to China since 2016, although other senior officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken have visited over the past two years. “The Taiwan issue is the first insurmountable red line in US-China relations, and ‘Taiwan independence’ is the greatest risk to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” CCTV said. - HKFP
Some of Donald Trump's biggest and newest supporters from finance and Silicon Valley, including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, have spent the past several weeks trying to whitewash comments the former president and current Republican presidential nominee made in relation to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. In the past week, the Kamala Harris presidential campaign and President Joe Biden both highlighted Trump’s August 15, 2017 comment, when the former president said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the clashes that followed the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville. - Wired
Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both former military test pilots, became the first crew to ride Boeing’s Starliner capsule on June 5 when they were launched to the ISS for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission. But Starliner's propulsion system suffered a series of glitches beginning in the first 24 hours of its flight to the ISS, triggering months of cascading delays. Now they will not return to Earth until early next year about the rival SpaceX vehicle. NASA said issues with Starliner's propulsion system made it too risky to carry its first crew home. The agency's decision, tapping Boeing's top space rival to return the astronauts, is one of NASA's most consequential in years. - Standard
