World News

A police officer has been filmed kicking and stamping on the head of a man lying on the ground at Manchester Airport.

The uniformed male officer is seen holding a Taser over the man, who is lying face down, before striking him twice while other officers shout at onlookers to stay back in a video shared widely online.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said firearms officers had been attacked while attempting to arrest someone following a fight in the airport's Terminal 2 on Tuesday. It said it had referred itself to the police watchdog.

Anger has grown over the video and a crowd of what appeared to be several hundred people protested outside the police station in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on Wednesday evening.

GPT tldr: Chaos erupted at the offices of the e-commerce platform TMON in Seoul as thousands of angry customers swarmed the building demanding refunds amid the company's liquidity crisis. With no clear protocol in place, the crowds grew unruly as they tried to register for refunds, with many leaving empty-handed. TMON and its sister company WeMakePrice have been unable to pay their sellers since May, leading to a flood of canceled purchases and refund requests that the companies have struggled to process. Customers whose travel packages were canceled expressed frustration at the lack of progress, with one saying the waiting numbers and registration forms seemed meaningless. Despite TMON's efforts to process 1,000 refunds on-site, the massive crowds far exceeded that number, leaving many customers still waiting to get their money back.

Fun fact: TMON's parent company, Qoo10, owns wish.com.

Japan’s total population declined for the 15th straight year in 2023, dropping by more than a half-million people as the population ages and births remain low.

Births in Japan hit a record low of 730,000 last year. The 1.58 million deaths last year were also a record high. Japan’s population was 124.9 million as of Jan. 1.

The data released Wednesday by Japan’s Internal Affairs Ministry also showed that the 11% increase in foreign residents helped their population surpass 3 million for the first time. They now make up nearly 3% of the total population and are mostly of working age from 15 to 64.

Surveys show that younger Japanese are increasingly reluctant to marry or have children, discouraged by bleak job prospects, the high cost of living — which rises at a faster pace than salaries — and a gender-biased corporate culture that adds a burden only on women and working mothers.

• Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest among banks sharing data with NCA
  • Project to curb organised crime, fraud, money laundering
  • First such programme worldwide on this scale, NCA says
  • Economic crime estimated to cost UK up to $450 bln per year

An “egregious” refusal by successive Canadian governments to honor a key treaty signed with Indigenous nations made a “mockery” of the deal and deprived generations of fair compensation for their resources, Canada’s top court has ruled.

But while the closely watched decision will likely yield billions in payouts, First Nation chiefs say the ruling adds yet another hurdle in the multi-decade battle for justice.

In a scathing and unanimous decision released on Friday, Canada’s supreme court sharply criticized both the federal and Ontario governments for their “dishonourable” conduct around a 174-year-old agreement, which left First Nations people to struggle in poverty while surrounding communities, industry and government exploited the abundant natural resources in order to enrich themselves.

“For almost a century and a half, the Anishinaabe have been left with an empty shell of a treaty promise,” the court wrote in the landmark ruling.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong speaks at the 57th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting at National Convention Center, in Vientiane, Laos

TOKYO (AP) — Depending on who you ask, the bones that have been sitting in a Tokyo repository for decades could be either leftovers from early 20th century anatomy classes, or the unburied and unidentified victims of one of the country’s most notorious war crimes.

A group of activists, historians and other experts who want the government to investigate links to wartime human germ warfare experiments met over the weekend to mark the 35th anniversary of their discovery and renew a call for an independent panel to examine the evidence.

Japan’s government has long avoided discussing wartime atrocities, including the sexual abuse of Asian women known as “comfort women” and Korean forced laborers at Japanese mines and factories, often on grounds of lack of documentary proof. Japan has apologized for its aggression in Asia, but since the 2010s it has been repeatedly criticized in South Korea and China for backpedalling.

Around a dozen skulls, many with cuts, and parts of other skeletons were unearthed on July 22, 1989, during construction of a Health Ministry research institute at the site of the wartime Army Medical School. The school’s close ties to a germ and biological warfare unit led many to suspect that they could be the remains of a dark history that the Japanese government has never officially acknowledged.

SYDNEY, July 27 (Reuters) - Australia said on Saturday it had signed a A$2.2 billion ($1.4 billion) four-year contract with state-owned submarine builder ASC to upgrade the navy's Collins class submarines.

The "sustainment contract" is part of a government pledge to keep the diesel-electric powered Collins-class fleet "a potent strike and deterrence capability", Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said in a statement.

The contract will be "directly ensuring job security for more than 1,100 highly skilled workers", with the work carried out in the towns of Henderson in Western Australia and Osborne in South Australia, Conroy said.

Fires on French railway tracks have delayed journeys for 800,000 travelers in what the transport minister described as “coordinated attacks of malicious intent.”

A co-ordinated arson attack on the French rail system is turning the first weekend of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris into a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of travelers.

French rail company SNCF announced on Friday its high-speed train system had been hit by "deliberate arson attacks to damage \[its] facilities" causing delays and cancellations which are expected to last all weekend.

The disruptions are affecting trains heading East, North and West of Paris, and travelers have been asked to postpone their plans.

MANILA, July 27 (Reuters) - The Philippines on Saturday completed unimpeded a resupply trip to its troops at a disputed South China Sea shoal, its foreign ministry said, the first such mission under a new arrangement with China aimed at cooling tensions.

The Philippines and China last week announced a "provisional agreement" on Manila's resupply missions to its contingent of troops on a naval ship grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal, after repeated clashes between vessels that have caused regional concerns about an escalation of hostilities.

The Philippines intentionally immobilised the now rusty former U.S. vessel at the shoal in 1999 in an attempt to claim it as its territory and has since maintained a small rotational troop presence there, infuriating China, which has coast guard stationed in the area.

Vice Admiral Eduardo Santos was in charge of the Philippine navy at a time of ‘creeping invasion’ by China. Then along came an unusual idea

More than 25 years ago, the BRP Sierra Madre was sent off for one final, secret voyage. In the darkness of night, the Philippine navy ship sailed from Manila Bay into the remote waters of the South China Sea. Then, to the surprise of many, it ran aground, and hasn’t moved since.

“I did it as quietly as I could, so I would not raise any hackles among anybody,” says retired Vice Adm Eduardo Santos, who was chief of the navy at the time. To him, it was a case of mission accomplished. His plan had been to run the ship on to a small reef known as Second Thomas Shoal, one of the world’s most fiercely contested maritime sites, without China knowing. The move would help the Philippines defend the area for decades to come.

“The first reaction was the Chinese ambassador knocking at my office early in the morning when they heard about it … I said, ‘well, it was supposed to be on the way [to a mission], and it ran aground’,” says Santos. With hindsight, Santos, who is now 80, can smile about it, though he, more than most, is keenly aware of how delicate the issue remains.

If the shoal had been left unoccupied, it would have been lost to Beijing, he says, because the Philippines was already facing a “creeping invasion” by China.

Beijing had already seized Mischief Reef, an atoll just 21 nautical miles away, despite being within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – an area that stretches 200 nautical miles from a state’s coast, giving it special rights to build or exploit resources in the area. Second Thomas Shoal is also with the Philippines’ EEZ.

Three Chinese students are under investigation over footage captured by a drone of a United States aircraft carrier and naval facilities in South Korea in June, local police said on Wednesday.

The suspects are aged between 30 and 49 and are studying in Busan, a port city located on the southeastern coast of South Korea, where U.S. Navy aircraft carriers frequently visit.

The Chinese nationals were caught flying a drone toward South Korea's Naval Operations Command in Busan where aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was docked on June 25, local police said. They are accused of illegally filming the vessel and military facilities.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — There is no indication that a big cargo of industrial fuel oil stored in a tanker that sank in stormy weather in Manila Bay has started to leak, the Philippine coast guard said Friday, and plans are being firmed up to try to siphon off the highly toxic shipment to prevent a major spill that could reach the bustling capital.

The tanker Terra Nova had left Bataan province en route to the central province of Iloilo with about 1.4 million liters (370,000 gallons) of industrial fuel oil stored in watertight tanks when it got lashed by huge waves and took on water. The crew struggled to steer the tanker back to port but it eventually sank shortly after midnight Thursday. The coast guard rescued 16 crewmembers but one drowned, coast guard spokesperson Rear Adm. Armando Balilo said.

“We’re racing against time to siphon off the oil to avoid an environmental catastrophe,” Balilo told reporters, adding that the plans could be hampered if the weather turns bad.

A Russian vessel is suspected of a territorial violation of Finland’s marine area in the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea, the Finnish defense ministry said on Friday.

The suspected violation, which the Finnish Border Guard is currently investigating, took place in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland Friday afternoon, a brief government statement said.

The ministry didn’t disclose further details of the incident but the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat said, citing information from border officials, that the suspected vessel is the Russian Navy’s hydrographic survey ship, the Mikhail Kazansky.

The Russian vessel, used among other things for underwater topography and repair work, entered into Finnish territorial waters south of the town of Hamina without authorization just after noon Friday, and the violation lasted about seven minutes, the newspaper said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18426493

> Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, which fly to their target and detonate on impact, have become a staple of Russian aerial attacks since they began being used in the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

> The new Russian drones with cameras do not carry explosives but closely resemble regular Shahed drones and fly with groups of them, Cherniak said. The second new type of drone contains no explosive charge or only a small one and is being used as a decoy, Cherniak added.

After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves.

Yasmeen al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis towards its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility.

They spent a day under a tree before moving on to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the blistering sun, but not much else.

Israel has said it goes out of its way to protect civilians in its war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs Gaza and led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that sparked the latest conflict.

People living next to Santiago Bernabéu venue say gigs – including those by Taylor Swift – are ruining their lives and are taking action.

Although best known for the past eight decades as the home of Real Madrid, the ground, which has just undergone a five-year, €900m (£756m) refurbishment, has over the past four months been hosting a series of high-profile concerts.

If the gigs have helped put the Bernabéu on the map with visiting singers such as Taylor Swift, Luis Miguel and, for four consecutive nights this week, the Colombian star Karol G, they have driven local residents to despair. Some have taken to referring to the stadium as a torturódromo, or torture-drome.

Fed up with decibels far exceeding legal levels, fans camping out in parks, drunk people urinating in doorways and the blocking off of residential roads, an association representing those living around the Bernabéu in the Chamartín neighbourhood is taking legal action against those responsible, including Madrid city council.

“It’s just hideous – you can’t move your car, you can’t take the dog out, and you’re having to prepare yourself mentally because it’s awful,” says De Pontevès. “It also creates health problems – lots of us are suffering from more frequent headaches, stress, anxiety and depression.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17975216

> "Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets."

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — At least 26 people were killed by a gang in three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north and eight villagers remained missing Friday in the latest violence in the South Pacific island nation relating to contested land ownership and sorcery allegations, officials said.

“It was a very terrible thing … when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women. They were killed by a group of 30 young men,” the acting police commander in East Sepik province, James Baugen, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday.

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — When a group of military officers appeared on state television in Niger one year ago to make a dramatic announcement of a coup, they said they deposed the West African nation’s elected government for two key reasons: its security, and economic crises.

But those challenges have persisted, even worsened. The country’s 26 million people — among the world’s youngest and poorest — are struggling after the junta severed ties with key international partners, who have imposed sanctions and suspended security and development support affecting close to half of Niger’s budget.

The coup was the latest and perhaps most significant of the recent military takeovers in Africa’s Sahel, the vast, arid expanse south of the Sahara Desert that has become a global hot spot for extremist violence. Niger had been the West’s last reliable partner in the region in battling jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

Now, a crucial U.S. drone base is going, along with U.S. forces vacating ahead of a September deadline. More than 1,000 French troops also pulled out after being told to leave. A key China-backed pipeline once meant to turn Niger into an oil exporter has stalled with the insecurity and uncertainty.

NEW DELHI (AP) — India and China have agreed to work urgently to achieve the withdrawal of tens of thousands of troops stationed along their disputed border in a long-running standoff, India’s government said.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on Thursday on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations meetings in Laos, where they stressed the need for an early resolution of outstanding issues along the disputed Line of Actual Control, the long Himalayan border shared by the two Asian giants.

German producers have sparked a dispute by filing an opposition to a Turkish application to grant the döner kebab's special status at the EU level, initiating a six-month period to resolve disagreements.

A Turkish application to the European Commission for the döner kebab to be given similar EU recognition as the Neapolitan pizza and Spain's jamon serrano has been opposed by Germany, sources close to the issue have told Euronews.

As reported, in April Türkiye filed an application to register the name döner in Europe so that it can be used only by those producers conforming to the registered production method and product specifications.